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Filed by Fletcher Moody — Literary Correspondent I was at the party where Sherwood Anderson swallowed the thing that killed him, and I did not see it happen, and neither did he. It was late February of 1941, on a ship at a New York pier, one of those bon-voyage affairs that were still permitted then, where the friends of the traveler come aboard before sailing and drink the traveler's health in the traveler's stateroom and up on the deck until...

Email mountain is down to c.1900. Nothing pre-Cambrian exists in the inbox. Some still to be marked as read, some subscriptions to be deleted. Audible trying to tempt a return, bloody Emma Bridgewater making more gorgeous stuff, dammit, and ironically, the Stoic guy’s newsletter which I skim-read, nod along to and return to my merry non-Stoical ways. Consistent at least. During the mind-numbing, sometimes poignant, process of ridding the past,...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002zljp/monster ‘What is truth?’ Pontius Pilot is alleged to have asked this kind of question before passing judgement. It may have seemed to him a sensible thing to do. For Judeans that was passing the bronze prutah. An institutional washing of the hands that predated Moses. Monster has a tripartite structure. It looks through the lens of the story from different points of view. Saori Mugino (Sakura Andō...

After the early bird raid on the Huntly Hairst, went to that liminal of places, Leith Hall, to meet a cousin for tea and walk the gardens. Was too early, so walked to the pond thinking of chi gunging the pine forest as I used to of a Saturday morning when there was nobody around. Was horrified to find the ancient pine trees had been felled. All of them. The soil scarred by the machinery that had burst through it all. Ravaging the forest. The air...

Most career criminals live in grey areas and not the eternal sunshine of the superwealthy. Some of us may know them. Paul Tait for example came out as The Bad Guru and offers redemption. I knew he indirectly bought and ran with his brother many legitimate businesses in Clydebank, such as The Horse and Barge. A Celtic pub. What interested me more from an authorial perspective were his links with the IRA and his ability to flit from country to...

Wasn’t intending to go to the Huntly Hairst (Harvest) this year, as it started to appear on the list of ‘things-I-can’t-be-arsed-with-anymore’. The same stalls of oils, honeys, teas, soaps, terrible crafts by people who really should take up crosswords instead of spreading ugliness in the world, and home-made kombucha at a fiver a bottle, usually made by someone who looks like they haven’t washed. Angry wasps, angrier pensioners, parking sagas,...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0030qjb/tuesday Tuesday is a stupid film. I don’t mind stupid. Sometimes I welcome it. It makes me feel smarter. I didn’t really get it at first. Some kind of scene in which a grime-covered, size-shifting macaw who listens to hip-hop, lifts its wing and people are at peace? It took me a while to realise this was Death. The plot is identical to (I re-read it to make sure) to Duncan Williamson’s short story,...

Our Story and Poem of the Month for August, very kindly chosen by Jane Hyphen

"Invention... can give form to dark, shapeless substances, but cannot bring into being the substance itself." - Mary Shelley

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0030fhy/monkey-man There was a time in Holywood when men were men. They had to smoke like a steam engine leaving the station. Drink like there was no tomorrow and break enough hearts to keep the tabloids busy inventing new kinds of innuendo. Some of them were singers, crooners or dancers. They had to shoot straight and have the innate ability to gallop away on any old horse when needed. Which brings me to...