The Website of a Disappointed Man

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If you are here to read one of the Disappointed Man's short stories, then here it is: The Sandwich Factory

Here's what I've read so far in 2023:
('R' indicates rereading / referring to a work | numbers in parentheses after a short story/novel indicate page count)

Novel Biography Short Story Poem Critical work Newspaper article

For the Patrick Hamilton video: Uploaded to YouTube 2023/01/18
Patrick Hamilton, The Slaves of Solitude (327)
Far more novelistic than Hangover Square, utilize numerous techniques: free indirect discourse, internal monologue, analepsis, that are specific to its form.
It even employs its own orthographic conventions to represent the speech of one of its characters.
Sean French, Patrick Hamilton: A Life (ch. 18)
John Mepham, British Fiction after Modernism (ch. 6)
Alastair Renfrew Mikhail Bakhtin
The Slaves of Solitude exemplifies Bakhtin's conception of language, it's a highly dialogical novel.
John Mepham, British Fiction after Modernism (ch. 6)
Ian Burkitt Self and others in the field of perception: The role of micro-dialogue, feeling, and emotion in perception
Numerous insights applicable to Hamilton's novel, particularly the example he gives from Dostoyevsky's novel, The Poor Folk which points to Mr Thwaites sense of inferiority.

For the "Treasure" video:
Robert Louis Stevenson, The Treasure of Franchard
(R) G.K. Chesterton, The Honour of Israel Gow
(R) Emma McEvoy, G.K. Chesterton and J. Meade Falkner's Rewritings of the Gothic
(R) Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Musgrave Ritual
Honore de Balzac, Facino Cane
(R) Edgar Allan Poe, The Gold-Bug
For the "Crocodile" video:
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Crocodile
(R) Thomas de Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium Eater
(R) Christina Rossetti, My Dream

For the "Canines behaving badly" video: Uploaded to YouTube 2023/01/07
Leonora Carrington, The Debutante
Very similar to Saki in how it uses an animal in a satirical way. Excellent. (3)
Angela Carter, The Werewolf
Retelling of Little Red Riding Hood (2)
(R) Saki, Esme
Society dame tells her own 'hunting story' in which a hyena eats a child. (5)

For the Reinaldo Arenas video:
Reinaldo Arenas, Before Night Falls (1993)
A mix of Genet with re to his fugitive status/incarcertaion and Jarman with re to how his text blends art, sex, and activism. Get photos together. p177-224 his time in prison, such good writing.
Fernando Soto, Reinaldo Arenas (1998)
Chapter 1 on Before Night Falls makes a series of good points about Arenas's views on fiction/autobiography and the structure of the work itself.
Soto doesn't quite draw out his insights, but what he deems part 1 has spaces where Arenas can completely withdraw from society, part 2 is both his engagement with a society that is transformed into a vast open prison, part 3 is his having escaped but also having been cast out from society.
Jorge Edwards Antes que Anochezca
2001 essay on the release of the movie Before Night Falls in Chile by someone who knew Reinaldo Arenas.
QUOTE: "En comparacion, las carceles francesas de un Jean Genet parecen hoteles de cinco estrellas." / In comparison, the French prisons of Jean Genet are five star hotels.
YouTube interview with Julian Schnabel and Javier Bardem about their adaptation of Arenas's Before Night Falls.

THOMAS BERNHARD
January: Wittgenstein's Nephew
(R) Thomas Bernhard, Wittgenstein's Nephew (19XX)
Comment on the two translations, with the one by the English translator appearing, after a brief comparison, to be superior.
(R) Gita Honegger, Thomas Bernhard: The Making of an Austrian
This is the best book in English that I have regarding Bernhard's career and writings. On WN, it provides the following points of interest: LIST
Denis Diderot, Rameau's Nephew (1805)
In truth, not greatly interesting. There was more here for a comparison with De Quincey's On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts than with WN.
Zollan Ljingye. Curtain
Very smart, but weirdly undisciplined essay on Rameau's Nephew and Wittgenstein's Nephew. Expresses one point well, that the counter-point between LW, PW, and TB, is supposed to call into question whether or not the 'more sane' LW and TB are not, in fact, as mad as Paul. Or, indeed, as sane.

Not used yet:
Angela Carter, The Kiss
Set in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, moves from what reads like travel writing into a historical account and then into a fairy tale that folds back to touch on the previous sections, filling them with magic. .
Angela Carter, The Snow Child
Another tale set in winter, this one features a sequence of magical transformations that mirror the conflicting desires of a husband and wife. (1)
Leonora Carrington, The Skeleton's Holiday
Pure imagination; a sequence of images and events, (many of them humorous), in the life of a skeleton. (2)
Leonora Carrington, Down Below
Absolutely extraordinary autobiographical account of Carrington's period of insanity in the Spain of 1943.
Mara R. Witzling ed., Voicing our Visions: Writings by Women Artists
Brief overview of Carrington's life and career as painter and writer.
Jamaica Kincaid, Girl
Very interesting form, that of a set of instructions/injunctions being given to a girl, with her occasional protests. (2)
Steven Millhauser, The Knife Thrower
Far more recent than my usual reading. Recommended by jamesdedood. Concerns a transgressive display of knife throwing in which the audience (reader) are implicated. (14)
(R) Evelyn Waugh, The Loved One (162)
R.K. Narayan, An Astrologer's Day
Perhaps rather predictable in terms of its twist, but very beautifully rendered tale. (5)
R.K. Narayan, The Missing Mail
Excellent story about a meddling mail man and his uninvited intervention in a family's affairs. (6)

THE FAERIE QUEENE by Edmund Spenser

1860 - Una and the Lion - William Bell Scott


1880 - Una and the Lion - Briton Riviere

1825 c. - The Faerie Queene - William Blake / From an amazing article here: LINK

2023/01/16 Book I Canto 6 The conclusion sees the Archimage reappear.
2023/01/19 Book I Canto 7 Redcrosse is captured by a giant, who Duessa encourages to take her as his own. The dwarf flees and happens to meet Una, reuniting the two narrative lines.
Prince Arthur then makes his entrance. Perhaps the best canto thus far, the dialog between Una and Arthur is particularly good.
2023/01/20 Book I Canto 8 Prince Arthur fights and kills both the giant and the beast that Duessa rides. Redcrosse is found in pitiful condition. Duessa is then stripped naked, revealing the foul appearance of Falsehood, and sent on her way. She flees to the wilderness to hide herself.
2023/01/21 Book I Canto 9 Prince Arthur unburdens himself of his sadness, his quest to find his fairy queen. The knights exchange gifts and part. Encounter with Despair - this is a particularly rich encounter. Una saves Redcrosse from succumbing.
2023/01/21 Book I Canto 10 Una takes Redcrosse to the Hospital of Holiness where Faith, Hope, Charity, etc. cleanse him of sin. He is shown the new Jerusalem and his lineage is revealed: he was born of Saxon kings and kidnapped by fairies as a babe. He shall be Saint George. A vital part of the allegory, but deathly boring reading.
2023/01/15 Book I Canto 11 Redcrossse fights the dragon. An excellent climax to book I, which moves on to the happy ending of the final canto.

1805 c. - The River of Life - William Blake / Tate: LINK
The source for this painting and Spenser is Revelations 22.1-2. In the canto, the river is presented as a well; Redcrosse is inadvertently knocked into it by a blow from the dragon's tail.
2026/01/15 Book I Canto 12 The grateful king gives Redcrosse his daughter's hand in marriage and makes him heir apparent to his lands. Duessa and the Archimage attempt, without success, to derail the wedding ceremony.