Adam RobertsinAdam’s NotebookPervigilium FinneganisSo, some years back I translated Finnegans Wake into Latin. You can buy the resulting volume as an e-book from Amazon for £1.54: all four…6 min read·1 day ago--2--2
Adam RobertsinAdam’s NotebookWilliam WaroftheworldsworthI wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o’er Martian hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A mass of alien tentacles; Beside the…1 min read·3 days ago----
Adam RobertsinAdam’s NotebookSome Tschichold PenguinsWhy choose the penguin, that blameless but distant avian, as name and brand? Allen Lane was following a German precedent: Albatross Books…5 min read·4 days ago----
Adam RobertsinAdam’s NotebookSassoon and WordsworthSassoon’s superbly effective poem works via simplicity: plain language, simple end-stopped single-syllable rhymes, a direct development of…3 min read·5 days ago----
Adam RobertsinAdam’s NotebookW H Auden, ‘The Shield of Achilles’ (1955): ‘Winds’This morning I have been re-reading Auden’s The Shield of Achilles (1955) in this gorgeous new edition, published by Princeton University…7 min read·May 26, 2024----
Adam RobertsinAdam’s NotebookCadillac, Rolls, CybertruckIn his 1963 essay ‘Art of the Coke Culture’ (a reference to Coca-Cola, not the white powder) art-critic David Sylvester compares the design…7 min read·May 23, 2024----
Adam RobertsinAdam’s NotebookHugo, ‘Chanson’ (1853)I said I wouldn’t fill up this notebook with more of these, but I’m going to pause on just one more: Les Châtiments book 1, ‘La société est…2 min read·May 11, 2024----
Adam RobertsinAdam’s NotebookPope’s GilgameshThat Alexander Pope never completed, or published, his translation of the Epic of Gilgamesh is, perhaps, not surprising. Despite the…6 min read·May 8, 2024--1--1
Adam RobertsinAdam’s NotebookWallace Stevens, ‘The Reader’ (1935)The speaker of this poem is reading a book at night. S/he considers the night itself to be a kind of book. It’s a cold, autumnal night…6 min read·May 6, 2024--1--1