Columns
I've been writing a literary column for openDemocracy, "Standing Perpendicular." Columns to date have concerned Mark Helprin and adversity, Irvine Welsh and class loyalty, Samuel R. Delany and heterotopias, David Mamet versus Gilad Atzmon on most everything, Suzanne Collins and Koushun Takami on governments killing teenagers, Anita Desai and Nek Chand as artists of disappearance, Michel Houellebecq and the decline of Western sexuality, Scott Adams and the U.S. economy, Alan Hollinghurst and commemoration, Milan Kundera and privacy, Etgar Keret and magical thinking, Jennifer Egan and extraneity, Dostoevsky versus Tolstoy on humanitarian interventions, T.C. Boyle on invasive species eradication, Jane McGonigal versus Tom Bissell on computer gaming, and Damon Galgut's South Africa.
And here's a list of my favorite books by authors discussed in the above columns. In some cases it was pretty hard to pick just one, so when in doubt I chose the book I was most tempted to feel was written just for me...
T.C. Boyle, Budding Prospects
Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games
Samuel R. Delany, The Mad Man
Anita Desai, The Artist of Disappearance
Jennifer Egan, The Keep
Damon Galgut, In A Strange Room
Mark Helprin, Memoir from AntProof Case
Alan Hollinghurst, The Line of Beauty
Michel Houellebecq, The Elementary Particles
Etgar Keret, Suddenly, a Knock on the Door (see also my piece on this book for Narrative)
Milan Kundera, Slowness
Irvine Welsh, Marabou Stork Nightmares
Contact: james jameswarner net
“Always move towards pain when making art.” -- J.M. Coetzee
"We are time wearing space as a mask, and with each breath we become smaller and smaller until finally nothing is left of us." -- Alta Ifland