bashful

Meghan O’Gieblyn: ‘Drinking is instant drama. So is religion'

O’Gieblyn’s urge to return to an organised religion, and her urge to return to drinking, were not precisely aligned or concurrent, but seem, with hindsight, clearly of a piece. “Something about religion and drinking and writing feels very linked to me – something that is private.” she says now.

Celia Paul: ‘Writing is a journey on the ground. Whereas if you paint you see everything at once’

We are now outside the Pensione Calcina, where the art critic and writer John Ruskin took a room in 1876–1877 while working on The Stones of Venice. “It’s also where Annie Ernaux stayed when she wrote Simple Passion,” says Paul. Ernaux’s book charted an all-consuming love affair.

No. 136 – On China ⫶ 六边形战士 ⫶ Moving focus, by Linda Liukas:

学海无涯, the sea of learning has no shore, I am told, and we all laugh at the difficulty of understanding another culture through its idioms and expressions. Three thousand years of Chinese culture to understand an idiom.

'Bashful' is 'Blyger' in Swedish