Tag Archive: nihilism


The life and times of Flann O’Brien

Filed under: Books, Fiction, Humour — Leave a comment
August 29, 2018

NO LAUGHING MATTER by Anthony Cronin (First published by Grafton Books, 1989)

984085There are certain novels, like Robert Musil’s ‘The Man Without Qualities’, that I find too daunting to even attempt and others, such as Malcolm Lowry’s ‘Under The Volcano’ that I have tried but failed to complete.

‘At Swim-Two-Birds’ by Flann O’Brien was, until this year, gathering dust in my unfinished pile. I have Anthony Cronin’s candid and informative biography of O’Brien to thank for finally completing this short, comic but notoriously challenging novel.

Cronin skillfully puts the work into a literary and historical context while bluntly presenting the man behind it as a sad character. Continue reading →

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ALL ABOUT NOTHING

Filed under: Humour, Modern Art, Politics — 1 Comment
September 6, 2013

UbuWeb today turned me onto The Nothingists.

I had never heard of this Dadaist, NO! NO! , group from Russia .

This is not surprising when you learn that their nihilist manifesto was summed up by the slogans:

Write nothing!
Read nothing!
Say nothing!
Print nothing!

Their “Creative Bureau of Nothingists” sounds like it would have made a great Monty Python sketch and would be a good name for many political departments.

The Nothingists [Nichevoki] were short lived.

They formed in Moscow in 1919 and ceased all (in)activity in 1923.

Nothing more is known.

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THE KILLER WITHIN

Filed under: Books, Gender, Movies, Music — Leave a comment
March 29, 2011

The Killer Inside Me is a deeply unpleasant movie which is  hard to watch and impossible to enjoy.

Michael Winterbottom’s film is based on the 1952 crime noir novel by Jim Thompson and a remake of a badly received 1976 movie of the same name.

It  is the squalid tale of Lou Ford (Casey Affleck) a small-town cop and unrepentant killer. His love of classical music and clean cut exterior is sharply at odds with the dark sadistic nature within.

Affleck’s mumbled drawl is so pronounced that many of his lines are as incomprehensible as his actions.

He knows he’s mentally sick but just can’t help himself. Being a young witness to the beatings his mother was (apparently willingly) subjected to makes him numb to the suffering he causes others.

Spade Cooley’s country swing number ‘Shame On You’ is used as a kind of ironic signature tune but his calculated cruelty goes way beyond being merely shameful.

His colleagues are not the brightest bunch so he even gets away with killing a man while visiting him in a prison cell (they think it was suicide…doh!).

I haven’t read the novel but it is no surprise to learn that was written as a first person narrative, with Thompson attempting to unravel what goes on in the mind of a sadistic killer. Continue reading →

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