three short stories by julian barnes

60/40

Sleeping with John Updike

The Revival

There should be more short stories online, I reckon.

thoughts on obscenity

Five Dials is a literary magazine published monthly by the Hamish Hamilton publishing house.  Each edition explores a theme, and includes a few unrelated articles.  I recently downloaded and read issue 6, Obscenity.

This issues features interviews with John Sutherland, John Mortimer, Ann Mallieau and John Calder exploring the change in British Culture brought about by the relaxation of censorship; and the relationship between censorship, obscenity, power and control. There is also an archive article from Richard Hoggart, a witness at the trial of Lady Chatterley’s Lover.

Art Spiegelman, Jello Biafra, and Jerry Heller are also interviewed and talk about censorship around art, music, and the relationship of these to the media in the USA.

There are two articles about obscenity as well, one from Patrick Neate about teenage boys and identity, and a rather overwritten and over-wrought one from Arundhati Roy (who is currently facing obscenity charges in Inida) about Gujarat.

The remainder of the issue is an odd mix: an obituary for Lux Interior, a longish piece about watching the Obama inauguration, an article by Alain de Botton, and a piece on Muriel Spark.

I’m not entirely convinced by Five Dials . Hamish Hamilton have a fine stable of authors to call on for content, but the magazine needs a more selective editor to make the themes work.  I like the idea of a literary magazine in pdf form, and it’s probably worth a look every so often. And it’s free.

“I think it’s highly inequitable that the talented should be permitted access to erotic fields denied to the clumsy, talentless majority. We should not only… defend to the death other people’s right to say things with which we disagree; we must also allow them to do it in abominable prose”

John Mortimer

Five Dials Number Six: The Obscenity Issue
Hamish Hamilton