Pnin’s double
Reading Nabokov’s Pnin, I spend a while deliberating over a passage in which the hapless Pnin, who teaches Russian in an American university with no requirement for a Professor of Russian, meets a Professor Wynn –… Read More
Ricardo Blanco’s Blog
- Alchemy, alephs and insomnia: origins of The Blue TentThe Blue Tent is released by Parthian as an e-book next Tuesday (20th August). Since the novel has provoked quite a few questions from readers, I thought it might be helpful to publish the text of an email... Read More
- Varieties of Exile: Machado, Benjamin, and an unknown teenager.‘Once near a border, it is impossible not to be involved, not to want to exorcise or transgress something. Just by being there, the border is an invitation. Come on, it whispers, step across this line. If you... Read More
- The art of lonelinessThe Lonely City is an exquisite meditation on loneliness, but it is also so much more. Laing explores the lives of a handful on American artists who knew loneliness well, and whose work often references that state,... Read More
- Midwinter with HerodotusRyzsard Kapuściński was a Polish writer who spent most of his working life as a roving foreign correspondent for the Polish state news agency (PAP) during the Communist era, but his own writings, in the form of personal... Read More
- Tlön, Uqbar, and the girl in the moonHaving fallen ill on the last day of teaching, the accumulated tensions of the semester finally erupting in an onslaught of snot, fever, and a hideous, raucous cough, I take to my bed in the hope... Read More
Ricardo Blanco, Citizen of Nowhere
