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New Statesman
04-07-2025
- Entertainment
- New Statesman
Ignore the pessimists – we are living through a literary golden age
Photo by Adam Hirons / Millennium Images, UK Literary culture is dominated by pessimists. They claim that the English novel is in a slump, the media is dying at the hand of tech oligarchs, and that culture is in a repetitive doom-loop. Every film is a sequel. Students don't read anymore. A generation of graduates are illiterate. Marshall McLuhan was right. There is a lot of truth in this perspective. Survey data shows there really has been a decline in reading this century. Studying literature at university is in steep decline. No-one doubts that there is a preponderance of screen time instead of book time. It is heartbreaking to see children still in their buggies addicted to tablets. Somedays, I feel the pull of the pessimistic argument. What was the last English book that was as good as Piranesi or An Inheritance of Loss? Why do we not have a new Sally Rooney, or a Percival Everett every year? But I think the overall picture is more complicated. Literature is doing just fine in quality terms, but we are at a tipping point. We have a chance to change all this, and pessimism won't help. Let's start with fiction. The last few years have seen some splendid British novels: Piranesi, Hamnet, Klara and the Sun, Shuggie Bain, and the Wolf Hall books. This year I have especially enjoyed Flesh by David Szalay. And Shibboleth by Thomas Peermohamed Lambert is a very funny new novel. International fiction is thriving: South America, Ireland, Korea, Japan and France have all produced great novels recently. This year, Helen deWitt, a true genius, is publishing a new novel. In 2022, Tyler Cowen listed seventeen major novels of modern times and concluded that we are not living through an especially bad time for literature. There is also children's writing. Sam Leith wrote in 2022 'we're going through a bit of a golden age for children's fiction.' He named Katherine Rundell, Piers Torday, SF Said, Jeff Kinney, Malorie Blackman, Philip Pullman, Philip Reeve and Michelle Paver. There are also writers like Alex Bell, Frances Hardinge, and Julia Donaldson. The bestselling shelves for non-fiction, however, have recently been full of trash. The recent Times list of the bestselling books of the last 50 years was, to say the least, dispiriting. But we don't lack excellent non-fiction. AN Wilson has just written a very good book about Goethe. Frances Wilson's new biography of Muriel Spark is truly excellent, as is Lamora Ash's compulsive book about Christianity, and Helen Castor's new biography of Richard II and Henry IV. Rural Hours by Harriet Baker remains underrated despite winning the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award. There is also Question 7, by Richard Flanagan, The Marriage Question by Clare Carlisle, Parfit by David Edmonds, What We Owe The Future, by Will MacAskill. We should also be optimistic about the breadth and variety of what is happening online. Naomi Kanakia, an American novelist turned Substacker, has just had her work profiled in the New Yorker, along with John Pistelli, another Substacker whose new novel Major Arcana is a weird and wonderful account of modern culture. Kanakia has written about the many fictional experiments happening on Substack. Several critics and essayists have emerged on Substack whose work is interesting and original, people like Henry Belger, alongside the established writers like BD McClay. Hollis Robbins is an original and daring academic voice writing about AI. Closer to home, AN Wilson, England's last great man of letters in the George Henry Lewes manner, has a Substack too, which I read religiously. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe On any given day you can read first-rate nonfiction online in places like 'Construction Physics', 'Works in Progress', and from writers like Paul Graham, Noah Smith, and Scott Alexander. In Britain, there is excellent work being done by Saloni Dattani about science and Alice Evans about demography and women's rights. Are you not fascinated to know that Starbucks is a bank? Do you not admire Amia Srinivasan, Sophie Elmhirst, and Sam Knight? We have seen the tail end of a golden age of obituaries, too, notably at the Economist and Telegraph as well as at the New York Times. It is like the days of the periodical and Grub Street and the Westminster Review. This online culture has real signs of growth. There are now five million paying subscribers on Substack. Library apps like Libby are going through a small boom. BookTok is making all sorts of unexpected books, including classics, into bestsellers. In 2017 the UK publishing industry had revenues of £4.8bn. Now it is £7bn. There are far more independent bookshops now than in 2016 – 1,052 compared to 867. What we are starting to see, I think, is a tipping point. The decline of literature is coming to an end. The bounce back might be starting from a low point, but it's very real. On Substack, Beth Bentley has written about the popularity of reading in modern culture. Gen Z read more books than their elders, she reports. There are plenty of other signs that the decline is over. Celebrities and influences are running book clubs. One X user reported their builder listening to George Eliot on the scaffolding. Naomi Kanakia recently wrote about the growing fandom for literature on Substack among people who are disconnected from literary discourse and find it all bewildering. The fact is that the common reader is still out there. And they can be found in increasingly unlikely places. The Silicon Valley entrepreneur Patrick Collison said at the end of 2024 that he had read ten classic novels: Bronte, Dickens, Mann, Flaubert, Melville, Eliot, James, Conrad, Woolf, Grossman. Inspired by this, Matthew Yglesias started reading classic fiction too, finishing all of George Eliot's novels in the first three months of 2025. Kyla Scanlon recently used The Screwtape Letters to analyse the economy. This energy for literature is spreading. Many of my most enthusiastic readers are from Silicon Valley or other non-literary areas. They are reading Tolstoy and Shakespeare. If I want to talk about Iris Murdoch, I am usually better off at a party of STEM and policy nerds than a literature gathering. Indeed, it is only when I meet literary people that the mood starts sinking. One English literature lecturer, who I encountered at a party recently, has only read 12 of Shakespeare's plays (one third of the total works). Another professor has seriously argued that Taylor Swift is the literary equivalent of Mary Shelley. The editor of the New York Times book review section hasn't read Middlemarch and doesn't plan to. An academic at St Andrews published a piece saying that she thought it was better for students to read fewer books. 'Reading one novel in three weeks, but reading it well,' she said, 'is a perfectly good target.' Likewise, too many of the literary pessimists I spoke to about this piece haven't read many of the modern novels they assume aren't very good. If we want the rest of the world to take literature seriously, the literati needs to set a good example. The most striking recent instance of this happened on X. When the 4Chan list of the best books they had read in the last decade was published, Zena Hitz shared it, saying: 'Don't know how to break this to you but the 4channers are running circles around the pros, academics and critics.' Her replies were plagued with literary people complaining that the 4Chan readers hadn't read enough women. The very people who believe that not enough young men are reading literature (and that this is connected to the phenomena of their voting for Donald Trump) had little more than complaints and nit-picking to offer when faced with a new constituency of readers. Whenever I talk to someone who thinks we are living in a desperately bad literary time, they usually do have a favourite living novelist, someone like Tessa Hadley or Ali Smith or Rachel Cusk. These are not writers I care for, but take note that the doomers are simultaneously admirers. English literature is in good enough shape to inspire disagreements about who the good writers really are. Pessimism about literature is probably more about the question of whether we ought to care about novels anymore. Some 20 years ago, VS Naipaul declared the novel dead. Who can doubt his reasons: 'We've changed. The world has changed. The world has grown bigger.' Terrorism, the fertility crisis, climate change, housing shortage, the fact that we cannot build basic infrastructure without years of bureaucratic delay, the financial crash of 2008, the pandemic, the rising feeling of an inevitable war we're inadequately prepared for – what has fiction had to say about the cycles of disruption in this century? Perhaps a lot of the low-beat mood among literary people is not actually about the quality of modern books, but simply about the fact that literature simply isn't as significant or important as it used to be. One reason why literary people may feel that we are not living in a great period of writing is that the writing that is truly excellent is not the sort of writing they produce. This sounds harsh, but I include myself in this assessment. So, I think the overall situation is something like this: there is still plenty of good writing, plenty of literary energy, but it is not always in the same places it used to be, and the literary establishment isn't always well aligned to its audience. We are living through a significant disruption. Instead of responding with despair, we need to adapt. This is fully achievable. As the world continues to evolve in the direction of uncertainty – caused primarily by AI and geopolitics – literature will only become more significant. It is no coincidence that people are turning back to literature now. The spread of AI will make the most 'human' activities more valuable. The returns to taste will rise. That is what literature excels at. The best work stands out all the more starkly in a world of abundant slop. We have seen this before. People decide to watch less television, scroll less social media, and read classic literature and they are amazed at the benefits. Someone somewhere is always discovering that Tolstoy is gold compared to the tinfoil of Netflix. The literati are poised on the edge of a huge social change: there is no point in asking ChatGPT to read Frederick Douglass on your behalf. Discussing those works with ChatGPT, though, is very valuable. Reading literature will also be a means of connecting with other people. We have to choose what side of this transition we are on. Do we want young people to read the Bible and Homer or do we want to complain about their choices on Twitter? Middlemarch just went viral on Substack. I see people there reading everything from the Mahabharata to JM Coetzee to Catherine Lacey. Elizabeth von Arnim was recently popular on TikTok. Can we be optimistic about that? If not, we may find ourselves left behind while literature carries on in its new forms of success. The task for those of us who care deeply about literature is to make it relevant in this new world. Even now, people are trying to find their way to books that will matter to them. Readers from unexpected places are searching for the best. If they find us too often complaining about the state of things, they will turn elsewhere. It is easy for us to see the dross that fills the shelves. But we ought to be searching as hard as we can for the best work, wherever it can be found. It is easy to regret the loss of the literary culture we all grew up with. But we are faced with the challenge of making something new. It is all too easy to see what we will lose with AI. But as Hollis Robbins told me, 'You can't be pessimistic if you fully grasp the creativity of the human mind. So much sublime work has been lost; some of it will be found. How can anyone be pessimistic when there is so much rediscovery work that AI is helping us do?' The world is full of aspiring writers. We need to raise their ambition, push them to be greater, showcase their work, be honest about their failures. Someone is always discovering Tolstoy for the first time. We ought to care a lot more about that. Patrick Collison and Matthew Yglesias and thousands of others whose names we don't know are coming to us. We need to welcome them. We need to show them what we have to offer. We need to choose between literature and politics. What the pessimists and I agree on is that this is a turning point. Where we differ is that I think we need to evangelize for the future, not decry the present. We need to read and enthuse. We need to innovate. We need to be the light that draws others in. It is time for us to shine out like a candle, to be a good deed in a naughty world. [See also: English literature's last stand] Related
Geek Tyrant
11-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Geek Tyrant
Laika HIres SUSPIRIA Writer to Script Travis Knight's Surreal Stop-Motion Adaptation of PIRANESI — GeekTyrant
Laika's adaptation of Susanna Clarke's mind-bending fantasy novel Piranesi just took a major step forward with the hiring of acclaimed screenwriter Dave Kajganich to handle the script. Kajganich, known for his work on Suspiria , Bones and All , and AMC's The Terror , is currently collaborating with some of the most respected directors in the industry, including Barry Jenkins, Ridley Scott, and Edward Berger. Now, he'll bring his talents and skills to Laika's ambitious stop-motion take on Clarke's beloved novel. 'Piranesi changed my soul and is one of the books in all the world, of any era, I most cherish,' Kajganich said in a statement. 'Having Travis' and Susanna's trust in adapting it is something I take as an honor of the highest order. They are two of the loveliest, smartest, and most humane people you can imagine, so all of this is an actual dream coming true for me.' First announced in June 2024, Piranesi will be directed by Laika President & CEO Travis Knight, who previously helmed the Oscar-nominated Kubo and the Two Strings and the upcoming Wildwood . The project marks a return to the studio's roots in stop-motion storytelling, even as they continue branching out into live-action. The story for Piranesi is set in a dreamlike alternative reality, and it follows Piranesi, 'whose house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls are lined with thousands upon thousands of statues, each one different from all the others. 'Within the labyrinth of halls, an ocean is imprisoned; waves thunder up staircases, rooms are flooded in an instant. But Piranesi is not afraid; he understands the tides as he understands the pattern of the labyrinth itself. He lives to explore the house.' There is one other person in the house, 'a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. 'But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known.' Since its release, Clarke's novel has become a literary phenomenon, selling over four million copies and winning the 2021 Women's Prize for Fiction. Its meditative tone, philosophical depth, and strange beauty seem tailor-made for Laika's visual storytelling. Knight previously shared in a statement: ' Piranesi is a treasure, and very dear to me. As a filmmaker, I can scarcely imagine a more joyful experience than wandering through the worlds Susanna dreamed into being. 'She's one of my all-time favorite authors, and with Piranesi , Susanna has created a beautiful, devastating and ultimately life-affirming work of art. I'm humbled that she chose LAIKA as her home.' Kajganich is also working on Brad Pitt's The Riders , he's also scripting Be My Baby , a Ronnie Spector biopic for A24, with Zendaya set to star and Barry Jenkins directing. While Laika continues to push further into live-action—with projects like Atmosphere from Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, and Crumble from Brian Duffield and producers Phil Lord and Chris Miller, the studio hasn't lost sight of what made them a fan favorite in the first place: bold, stylized stop-motion animation that tell stories with emotional weight. Source: Deadline
RNZ News
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- RNZ News
Susanna Clarke: coming back from a vanishing act
Photo: Bloomsbury Booker Prize long-listed English author Susanna Clarke is one of the most influential fantasy writers of our time. Twenty-one years after the publication of her smash-hit debut fantasy novel Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell , bestselling author Susanna Clarke is returning to this world with several short stories. There has only been one other large piece of writing in two decades. Her novel Piranesi won the Women's Prize For Fiction in 2021. In between, a bit like the magic she writes of, she vanished. After writing Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell in 2004 Susanna was diagnosed with ME, finding herself unable to write or even think of herself as a writer anymore. Susanne speaks with Susie.
RTÉ News
26-04-2025
- Entertainment
- RTÉ News
Fresh reads - 7 recent Irish debut novels you might have missed
The Irish literary scene has never not been in rude health - but its robustness is found in the new writers and work that is coming through. This year alone, there has been an abundance of stellar debut novels from Irish authors. Here are a few that may have slipped through the cracks, but which you really ought to read. Louise Hegarty - Fair Play If you're a fan of novels like Susanna Clarke's Piranesi, which blended mystery with elements of fantasy, then Fair Play will be right up your street. Having previously been published in journals including The Stinging Fly and Banshee, the Cork native's debut novel puts a clever spin on crime fiction with a story involves a party, a murder mystery and an unexpected death. Hegarty brilliantly harnesses humour and compassion in one of the most unique books you'll read this year (Picador). Róisín O'Donnell - Nesting Much like Ciara, the protagonist of her debut novel, Meath-based author Róisín O'Donnell was born in Sheffield to parents from Derry, before her family moved to Dublin when she was a teenager. Her sense of 'otherness' permeates both Ciara and this utterly gripping story about a woman attempting to escape an abusive marriage and a despicable husband to create a new life for her young children. With superbly-drawn characters, beautiful prose and a heartbreakingly tender story of coercive control and inner strength, you will not be able to put it down (Simon & Schuster). Catherine Airey - Confessions: A Novel The road from Ireland to the USA has been well-trodden in both a geographical and literary sense, but Catherine Airey's first novel offers a new take on the emigrant trope. Airey, an English-born author of Irish descent who now lives in Cork, tells the story of three generations of women set against several backdrops and eras, from the 1970s to post-9/11 New York and the 2010s. An absorbing read about family, belonging and the secrets that are sometimes necessary to keep (Penguin). Garret Carr - The Boy from the Sea What would you do if you found an abandoned baby on a beach? The Donegal-born Carr, who lectures in Creative Writing at Belfast's Queen's University, aptly weaves a tender story about a fisherman, Ambrose, who brings a new baby, Brendan, into his family in the 1970s - and the repercussions and impact that decision has. Carr has written for a YA audience in the past, but his debut novel for adults is an elegantly-written, beautiful story about compassion, love and landscape (Picador). Róisín Lanigan - I Want To Go Home But I'm Already There When it comes to genre, "ghost stories set in the rental crisis" are few-and-far-between - but that's precisely what makes Belfast-born Róisin Lanigan's debut novel so compelling. Áine, a twentysomething Irishwoman, moves into a flat in a bougie area of London with her English boyfriend Elliott, but it soon becomes apparent that all is not as it seems with their new abode. Encompassing themes of loneliness, social commentary and millennial angst, Lanigan's nimble storytelling - which often veers from eerie to existential - leaves the reader with plenty to think about (Penguin) Claire Gleeson - Show Me Where It Hurts With a starting point that is unimaginably horrifying - a husband one day deliberately crashes his car with his family inside - you might imagine that Show Me Where it Hurts is a difficult read. Well, it is. You will cry. Yet it's also a story of compassion, resilience and love. Gleeson deftly splits the story into two timelines - before and after the crash - to striking effect, making it a book that you won't forget any time soon. Gleeson has had numerous short stories published in the past, but her debut novel is a stunning effort (Sceptre). Elaine Garvey - The Wardrobe Department Here is a story set in a world that we don't read enough about. Written by Sligo native Elaine Garvey - who has previously had short stories published in Winter Papers and Dublin Review - her debut novel follows young Irish woman Mairéad, who works in the wardrobe department of the fictional rundown St. Leonard's Theatre in London. Unmoored and lonely, she returns to Leitrim when her grandmother dies, where she is forced to confront difficulties from her past. A quietly thought-provoking work (Canongate).
The Independent
30-01-2025
- The Independent
5 of the best views in Rome for a breathtaking look at the Italian capital
The trouble with Rome is that it has so many treasures. Its heady mix of must-see classical ruins, flamboyant fountains, Renaissance palaces and masterpiece-filled museums can make a trip to the Eternal City as exhausting as it is exhilarating – and that's before you've even set an aching foot in a designer store or strolled along a cobbled street in search of a(nother) delicious scoop of gelato. So, it's a good thing that there's another 'must' in Rome, and that's to experience il dolce fa niente – the sweet doing of nothing. And there's no better way to idle away the time than by enjoying a glorious view, perched high above the chaos of the capital's traffic. There are plenty of vantage points – well, the ancient centre was founded on seven hills and has since spread over several more – but these are five of the best. Of course, if you prefer a view that's literally breathtaking, you can always climb all 551 steps to the dome of St Peter's. Cameras at the ready… Aventine Hill Rising above the Circus Maximus, the ancient city's venue for chariot races, the Aventine is the most southerly of Rome's seven hills. Originally a plebian area, it later became home to the aristocracy who built pagan temples and lavish palaces, and is still a desirable, delightfully tranquil, residential district. It's worth the climb just to visit the church of Santa Sabina, which was built in the 5 th century. Zoom in on the carved cedarwood panels on its main door, which depict scenes from the Old and New Testaments, then step into the scented shade of the neighbouring Giardino degli Aranci, the Garden of Oranges, and enjoy the panorama of the Roman skyline. But don't go yet; walk the short distance to the Piazza dei Cavalieri di Malta, designed by Piranesi for the chivalric order of the Knights of Malta, then peep through the keyhole of the Priory door; you'll see the distant dome of St Peter's, perfectly framed by foliage. Belvedere del Gianicolo The Gianicolo (or Janiculum Hill) is the place where locals come to watch the sunset. Although it wasn't one of the original seven hills, as it sits on the other side of the Tiber outside the boundaries of the ancient city, it's higher than the others and makes a wonderful vantage point. Rising above the maze of narrow streets and pretty squares that characterise Trastevere, traditionally Rome's artisan quarter, it was named for the two-faced god Janus who was once worshipped here. Today it's topped with an equestrian statue of Giuseppe Garibaldi, hero of the Risorgimento – the revolution that led to Italy's unification. Follow Via Garibaldi to get up to the terrace, stopping on the way up to see Vasari's works in the church of San Pietro in Montorio, then relax and enjoy the drama as the sun sinks over the city. Piazza di Campidoglio This majestic Renaissance piazza, designed by Michelangelo, is celebrated for its elegant proportions and is home to the Capitoline Museums with their stunning collections of art and sculpture. However, it's the path to the back of the piazza (head behind the statue of Marcus Aurelius) that will have you drawing breath; it offers an unforgettable outlook onto the Foro Romano, the Roman Forum, which was the religious, political and commercial heart of Republican Rome. You'll see the columns of the Temple of Saturn, which once housed the state treasury, and the distant walls of the Colosseum. The Campidoglio, or Capitoline Hill, may have been the smallest of the seven hills but it was the power hub of the ancient world. Pincio Terrace Rome isn't well served with parks; if you're feeling the need to escape to a green space then the chances are that you'll make for the Villa Borghese, where the grounds offer winding paths, lakes and pretty flowerbeds. While there, make for the formal Pincio Gardens, where a terrace offers a splendid view of Piazza del Popolo, with the dome of St Peter's beyond. The People's Square (as it translates today) is perhaps Rome's most impressive (it's actually oval) and has at its centre an Egyptian obelisk taken from Heliopolis by Augustus for the Circus Maximus – where it served as a turning point in chariot races. The Vittoriano Many say that the outlook from the Vittorio Emanuele Monument, or Vittoriano, is the best of all – as it's the one place you can't see the monument itself. This vast white edifice, which dominates Piazza Venezia, was erected at the end of the 19 th century in honour of the first king of a unified Italy and has been disparagingly nicknamed 'the typewriter' by locals. It costs €15 to take the lift to its panoramic terrace, but you're well rewarded with an outstanding 360-degree view of the city and the hills beyond.
