Articles by Ben Hamilton
June 11, 2012
More News from Nowhere: John Lanchester’s Capital 0
Capital is a novel in almost entirely discrete segments and many of the characters never have cause to meet. Their parallel lives are tied together by a subplot that starts with mysterious postcards being found on the doormats of every resident. On one side a picture of their house, on the other an ominous message: “We Want What You Have.”
February 2, 2012
Illicit Pleasures: On Edward St Aubyn’s At Last 3
No one I have read has managed to make the anticipation of a cocaine injection sound as cosy but also as infinitely depressing.
October 4, 2011
The Pure Writer’s Heart: Fante, Father, and Son 3
The calamities of John Fante’s career are well known and threaten to overtake his fiction as the most important element of his life.
April 22, 2011
A Year with Peter Porter 1
Porter had a united vision of the arts, switching in his conversation between literature, music and painting on a whim, but talking about each discipline with equal authority and interest. And then I read his poetry.
November 30, 2010
Things Done Changed: Hip Hop and Literature 17
The juxtaposition of traditional poetry and hip hop is spiky and uncomfortable, to say the least.
October 14, 2010
Getting Serious: Gabriel Josipovici’s What Ever Happened to Modernism? 6
How many authors do we read who really seem to start from scratch every time, to wrench the book from within, ignorant of the market, uninfluenced by the clichés of contemporary literature?