I love the idea of poetry from more than 200 years ago being 'OG'.Got LIGHTS lined up next, looking forward to it.
Currently reading the penguin classics edition of Lyrical Ballads, the OG 1798 version with only 23 poems but has all the archaic spellings in Rime of the Ancyent Marinere and stuff as it was originally printed. Such a beautiful book.
I remember my friend described it as loads of luvvies in sandals with plastic swords - thing is, he's not wrong but it's great even so.Adore BBC’s I Claudius
There’s a very good Backlisted podcast on her ghost stories which does much to reevaluate her as more than certain kind of English ‘lady’ novelist. And Amis is an odd one isn’t he? Apparently wracked into near paralysis with all kinds of fears in his later life - from that cocky young gun slinger of Lucky Jim to a craven old man that lived in his ex wife’s house cos he couldn’t bear going outdoors.I read Amis's The Green Man - impetus was its reference in Ray Russell's Aickman biography.
Michael Dirda, in the introduction to my edition, speculates that it was some sort of ambition of Amis to out-do the ghost writing of the lover of his 2nd wife (Elizabeth Jane Howard, Aickman's partner for over ten years previously during his curiously open marriage/arrangement). Aickman, Russell details, considered his ex's new lover's production of a ghost story to be testament to his influence and literary accomplishments. This feels utterly narcissistic. I expect it was Jane Howard's influence on Amis (if anything) and had little to do with Aickman - she was of course the much more established and respected writer before Aickman found his modest success. Dirda says The Green Man is the most autobiographical of Amis's work. I wouldn't know, but it is enjoyable exploring these resonances between biography and fiction.