Pub Date : 2022-01-02DOI: 10.1080/09574042.2022.2019440
D. Hansen
Abstract Although critics have often noted Ann Quin's ‘literary geometry’ (Jordan 2020: 151) and ‘visual composition’ (Stevick 1989: 238), little has been made of the way her use of shapes and surfaces relates to contemporaneous developments in 1960s visual arts. Taking as its starting point Quin's specific art-world context, this essay reads Three (1966) in the light of post-war artists’ anxieties surrounding figuration and their turn towards the potentially generative effects and affects of disfiguration. I go on to consider how Niklaus Largier's account of aesthetic experience as ‘touch and being touched’ is fitting for the way Three makes of literature a plane of perception where figures move tenuously in and out of reach. But while Quin's characters look vainly to figures – human, inanimate, whole, fractured – in pursuit of aesthetic experiences, such ‘touch’ is usually withheld, deferred, or even made violent. What emerges is a view of Quin's particular mode as setting forth an aesthetic of touch where objects trigger not exalted experience so much as marking post-war conditions to be reckoned with, however elusive, equivocal, and resistant to resolution they may be. With this, Three seems to endorse the idea that an artwork at best can be an ‘emotive form’, as Donald Judd put it in 1967, with its characters typifying late-modernist concerns surrounding representation, what makes ‘good’ art, and performance more generally.
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Pub Date : 2022-01-02DOI: 10.1080/09574042.2022.2019439
C. Clarke
Abstract In her last letter to Robert Creeley, Ann Quin mentions that she has ‘been clearing out a lot of suitcases crammed with letters’. By contrast, Creeley kept this letter and one other inside his own copies of Quin’s novels, Three and Passages, separating them from his main collection of her papers. The filing of Quin’s letter inside Three suggests that the act of retrieving her from an archive could be at odds with her novel’s exploration of a couple’s disastrous attempt to recover ‘a life’ for their missing lodger, ‘S’. Echoing the presentation of ‘S’ in Three, ‘M’ in Creeley’s short prose piece, ‘Mabel’, reiterates Quin’s critique of historical rescue: ‘a sadly endless consequence of [M] shall be trailed through minds of her time like roses’. The echoes between the missing figures in Quin and Creeley’s texts can be read, I argue, as symptoms of the way in which Quin sought to refuse the limited cultural position available to women writers in the 1960s by embracing states of loss and withdrawal.
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Pub Date : 2022-01-02DOI: 10.1080/09574042.2022.2021027
Robin Blaetz
The intriguing title of Lauren Bliss’s first book suggests the confluence of two discourses that are rarely paired in film studies: [feminist] film theory and the maternal. The first is framed in this study as a system that offers essential observations about the place of representation in culture, but is in need of interrogation because of what is felt to be its detrimental effect on lived life. The final line of the introductory chapter states the book’s intention
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Pub Date : 2022-01-02DOI: 10.1080/09574042.2022.2020026
N. King
The clarion call of political moments of reckoning, like the Black Power movement in the 1960s and 1970s and, at present, the Black Lives Matter movement, often startle readers, editors and publishers who are unfamiliar with black women’s writing or were previously unconvinced by its commercial and literary potential into different perspectives. Each generation, it would seem, must learn anew how this writing traverses a rich and varied terrain, and how its themes, styles and subgenres are unpredictably ‘relevant’. Eschewing this generational amnesia is Jean Wyatt and Sheldon George’s edited collection, Reading Contemporary Black British and African American Women Writers: Race, Ethics, Narrative Form: it demonstrates a mature, nuanced understanding of black women’s writing on both sides of the Atlantic, and in doing so offers an elastic interpretation of ‘contemporary’. The editors’ concern with form and with ‘ethical dilemmas’ connected to race and gender presents an excellent lens through which to consider canonical and less well-known writers side by side. The collection offers readers—especially students and researchers—a needed set of case studies that engage black women’s literature in new ways, beyond the pursuit of an ‘ancestral line’ and ‘a maternal genealogy’ (7). With essays that foreground close readings and deploy critical frameworks ranging from affect theory to the aesthetics of difference, Wyatt and George build on the popularity of numerous monographs and courses that read black women’s writing cross-culturally and transnationally. They justify reading Black British and African American women writers together based on shared themes, similar influences and a common history of Jean Wyatt and Sheldon George, eds, Reading Contemporary Black British and African American Women Writers: Race, Ethics, Narrative Form. Routledge, 2020, £96.00 hardback 9780367189280
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Pub Date : 2022-01-02DOI: 10.1080/09574042.2022.2020012
Hannah Van Hove
Abstract Whilst her first two novels, Berg (1964) and Three (1966), were generally well-received, the publication of Passages (1969) signalled a turn in critical success for Ann Quin. Apart from one anonymous review in The Times which praised the lucid and direct expression of particular observations and moments in the novel, Passages generally didn’t fare well in contemporary appraisals. It was repeatedly accused of being too obscure and of elevating technique above content. Yet despite its critical failure, Passages is the novel Quin herself found most exciting. This article explores the multiplicity of meanings gestured towards in Quin’s third novel whilst at the same time reflecting on the process of conducting archival research in her papers. The piecing together of information to better understand Quin’s life and work mirrors the search for an ultimate(ly elusive) meaning in this novel which destabilizes the notion of a singular coherent self. Consisting of both textual analysis as well as personal reflections on the archival research process, this article weaves together criticism and memoir, drawing inspiration from Quin’s own description regarding the process of writing Passages in which she compared the moving to and from words to jazz improvisations. In doing so, this article adopts a circling approach, approaching both the novel in question and its author slantwise, suggesting that the space of not-knowing might nevertheless be a productive one in which to engage with Quin’s life and work.
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Pub Date : 2022-01-02DOI: 10.1080/09574042.2022.2020013
H. White
Abstract Drawing together dreaming and cut-up in Ann Quin’s work, this article considers the textual juxtapositions of the story, ‘Tripticks’ (1968), the latterly developed novel, Tripticks (1972), and Quin’s explicit incorporation of two ‘cut-up dreams’ into the narrative of Passages (1969). In placing cut-up segments together, a relationship—and a narrative—emerges, although not necessarily a plot-centric one, for ‘[p]lot can diminish in a forest of effects and accidents’ (Quin 1968, ‘Tripticks’: 14). Examining Quin’s development of ‘causeless’ narrative, with recourse to both psychoanalytic and countercultural accounts of the dream, I contend that Quin uses the motif and aesthetics of the dream to explore issues of agency, and dislocation between subject and environment. While W.S. Burroughs stakes his interest in the dream as a basis for (visual) literary invention in The Third Mind in 1967, claiming to be directing his attention ‘outward’, Freud suggests in 1899 that we ‘build our way out into the dark’ in the interpretation of dreams (550). The cut-up functions by the same logic, capitalizing on unpredictability, on not knowing what will come next. While Quin’s cut-ups produce comedy through surprising juxtapositions, their fracturing of temporal and spatial relations, and elimination of causality, result in a somewhat nightmarish ‘reality’ for her depicted subjects, emphasizing entrapment within the dream world over the liberational qualities of dream favoured by Burroughs, narrativising the tension between freedom and constraint inherent in the cut-up form.
本文将安·奎因作品中的梦和切割结合在一起，考虑了故事《Tripticks》(1968)的文本并列，后来发展的小说《Tripticks》(1972)，以及奎因在《段落》(1969)的叙述中明确地将两个“切割的梦”结合在一起。在将分割的片段放在一起的过程中，一种关系——以及一种叙述——出现了，尽管不一定是以情节为中心的，因为“很多东西会在影响和意外的森林中消失”(Quin 1968，“Tripticks”:14)。通过对梦的精神分析和反主流文化描述，考察奎因的“无因”叙事的发展，我认为奎因利用梦的母题和美学来探索代理问题，以及主体与环境之间的错位。1967年，W.S.巴勒斯(W.S. Burroughs)在《第三种思维》(the Third Mind)中将他对梦的兴趣作为(视觉)文学发明的基础，声称他的注意力是“向外”引导的，而弗洛伊德在1899年提出，我们在解释梦的过程中“建立了通往黑暗的道路”(550)。切割的功能是相同的逻辑，利用不可预测性，不知道接下来会发生什么。奎因的剪辑通过令人惊讶的并列产生喜剧，他们对时间和空间关系的破坏，以及对因果关系的消除，给她所描绘的对象带来了一种有点噩梦般的“现实”，强调了梦境世界的束缚，而不是巴勒斯所青睐的梦的自由品质，叙述了切割形式中固有的自由和约束之间的紧张关系。
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Pub Date : 2022-01-02DOI: 10.1080/09574042.2022.2019438
Leigh Wilson, Claire Bennett
Abstract Claire-Louise Bennett grew up in Wiltshire and studied literature and drama at the University of Roehampton before moving to Ireland where she worked in and studied theatre for several years. In 2013 she was awarded the inaugural White Review Short Story Prize and went on to complete her debut book, Pond, which was published by The Stinging Fly (Ireland) and Fitzcarraldo Editions (UK) in 2015 and by Riverhead (US) in 2016. Pond was shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize in 2016. Her fiction and essays have appeared in numerous magazines and journals, and she also writes about art and is a frequent contributor to frieze. Her novel, Checkout 19, was published by Jonathan Cape in August 2021. In between finishing Pond and writing Checkout 19, she discovered Quin’s work. In 2021 she made a programme for RadioMoLi on Quin, Annie Ernaux and Tove Ditlevsen (https://moli.ie/radio/series/writer-presents/writer-presents-claire-louise-bennett/). Checkout 19 directly engages with Quin and her work, and in this interview she discusses why Quin’s work is so significant for her own.
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Pub Date : 2022-01-02DOI: 10.1080/09574042.2022.2020027
G. Murphy
Print culture studies is a vast, complex, and a still expanding field, and this edited volume, the fifth in ‘The Edinburgh History of Women’s Periodical Culture in Britain’ series, is a significant contribution. The first aim is ‘to indicate the range and diversity of print media produced for women in Britain in the period from the Second World War to the early twenty-first century’ (1). This is definitely achieved. The volume of 456 pages focusses, not just on some of the well-known, iconic titles of this period, but also short-lived ones that have been perhaps forgotten, as well as digital magazines. The essays capture the dramatic change in women’s print media through developments in printing technologies and publication processes, and through the study of various titles, the story of how women’s lives have changed socially, politically, culturally and personally over those years. While this volume does not seek to cover all these changes, it does aim ‘to open up a number of different contexts for understanding women’s print media... and to showcase different critical approaches, as well as to illustrate the huge variety of subject matter in the field of British women’s print media’ (22). I think this aim is achieved too. The volume begins with an introduction by co-editor Laurel Forster who sets the tone providing different ways to contextualize the many changes faced by women and print media. She does this under seven sub-headings: becoming a woman in the postwar period; age, race, ethnicity, sexuality; feminism; home, craft, food; celebrity, advertising, fashion; women’s postwar print culture industries; studying women’s print media. For those new to this field, the latter section details the various ways researchers have utilized this mass media resource. This volume serves as a reference book of sorts, something to dip into, and as a collection of original scholarship. It does this over twenty-two essays divided into five topic areas, which can’t have been an easy task. Laurel Forster and Joanne Hollows, eds, Women’s Periodicals and Print Culture in Britain, 1940s to 2000s: The Postwar and Contemporary Period, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2020, 456 pp., 28 illustrations, 15 plates, ISBN 9781474469982
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Pub Date : 2022-01-02DOI: 10.1080/09574042.2022.2034372
S. Alexander
Sally Fraser’s photographs capture the look and atmosphere of the women’s liberation movement at its moment of emergence in the early 1970s. Six hundred people, mostly women with children, arrived on the Friday evening of the first national conference of women’s liberation— the ‘women’s weekend’—held at Ruskin, a trade union college of adult education in Oxford, in March 1970. We had only anticipated perhaps one hundred so the overflow filled the Oxford Union where the statues of distinguished men were swiftly covered with scarves and veils. Ruskin students—engineers, lorry drivers, post office workers, miners—emptied their rooms and communal spaces (library, billiard and tv room, the bar and canteen) for the guests. Sally Fraser’s camera scans rooms crowded with women of all ages, some with children, a scattering of men whose visible presence at meetings was a source of contention. A woman in the Union Hall clasps a child in one hand, a cigarette in the other (everyone smokes), another child lies on the chair beside her; a solitary woman with neat hair crosses her stockinged legs; a young woman reads a pamphlet at the back of the hall. Close-ups pick up historian Sheila Rowbotham’s incandescent smile, then literature lecturer Juliet Mitchell’s joyful clasp of the outheld fingers of filmmaker Sue Crockford’s small son, a table crowded by women, covered in empty plates and coffee cups. A group of children in the crèche listen to a story read by Chris Williams, husband of Jan whose coruscating critique of family, motherhood and housework made a plea for the independence of mothers, wives, daughters and communal living (see ‘Women and the Family’ by Jan Williams, Hazel Twort and Ann Bachelli in Once a Feminist: Stories of a Generation, edited Michelle Wandor, Virago, 1990). Ruskin students and fathers organized the creche. Arielle Aberson, a Ruskin student from Geneva and one of the conference organizers is caught in concentrated profile; she sits next to her aunt, Raya Levin, a social worker attached to Holloway Prison, who ‘ran a small workshop on delinquency’ on the Saturday (Wandor 1990: 48). Dressed in Afghan coats, thick sweaters, with hair piled up or Sally Fraser’s photographs, Images of Liberation were exhibited at Exeter College, Oxford, as part of the Photo Oxford 2021 Festival, and were curated by Four Corners. An expanded exhibition, Photographing Protest, will take place at Four Corners’ gallery in East London from March 2022. Visit fourcornersfilm.co.uk for more details.
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Pub Date : 2022-01-02DOI: 10.1080/09574042.2022.2021029
Nonia Williams
Carole Sweeney’s Vagabond Fictions; Gender and Experiment in British Women’s Writing, 1945–1970 is a highly engaging and convincing work of feminist critical recovery. Her focus is five of the most interesting mid-century female ‘British’ experimental writers: Anna Kavan, Brigid Brophy, Christine Brooke-Rose, Eva Figes and Ann Quin. Sweeney shows how the work of these writers is experimental in both content and form, and in this, how ‘Gender and Experiment’ are inextricably bound up. Sweeney brilliantly and wittily articulates this in terms of ‘aesthetic and thematic vagabondage’ (6), the latter of which ‘exhibits a movement away from domestic space, or shows it to be creatively and intellectually limiting for women, and into states of transit, transformation and displacement’ (2). At the same time, Sweeney is careful to avoid connecting femininity and experimentation in a way that ends up essentialising both. In this, Vagabond Fictions deliberately diverges from the argument made in Friedman and Fuch’s Breaking the Sequence, which equates realism with patriarchal structures and pits female writers’ experimentation against this. While Sweeney finds the concept of the ‘alternative fictional space’ (22) of women’s experimental writing useful, she rejects the earlier book’s realism/experimentalism and patriarchal/feminist oppositions. She reconsiders and rejects the so-called return to realism in writing post world war two; instead, Sweeney argues—and here her work contributes to the much needed deconstruction of the realist/experimental divide— the era is characterised by malleable and blurred boundaries between realist and experimental writing. Carole Sweeney, Vagabond Fictions: Gender and Experiment in British Women’s Writing, 19451970, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2020, 304 pp., HB 9781474426176
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