Oliver Arditi

Blog archive

  • Clever joy

    Clever joy

    Nuria Martinez cultivates a self-consciously naïve cartooning style, but her sophistication as an illustrator, and her narrative facility as a comics artist become quickly apparent from the outset of Outspace, her cute, colourful one-shot for ShortBox Comics. An upturned roller-skate in the fourth (or third?) panel of the first page transforms something that apes the Read more

  • Fragments of story

    Fragments of story

    So much discourse and tale-telling has entered our small house through the tiny window of our television—no bigger than the screen of a large laptop. It isn’t the ideal way to see cinematic work, but in recent months it has been the only way. Near the beginning of England’s first lockdown, we decided to watch Read more

  • Once upon a time in Canterbury…

    Once upon a time in Canterbury…

    Lots of regional music scenes have come and gone. Some we’ve heard of. We know that there were interesting things happening in electronic dance music in 1980s Detroit, because techno is now one of the most pervasive elements of global music; we know the same about Washington D.C. and emo, the Bronx and hip-hop, Canterbury Read more

  • Thresholds

    Thresholds

    We cross thresholds, we readers. Each book we read is entered through a portal, and marking those portals—projected onto the membrane between this and that, self and other, known and novel, given and made—there are images. I am not speaking metaphorically. For the last ten years, in my day job, I have been engaged in Read more

  • Complexities of service

    Complexities of service

    With The Caine Mutiny, Humphrey Bogart continued his drift away from movie-star roles, playing a part in which his character appears weak, unlikeable, cowardly and possibly lacking in mental stability. The film is an ensemble piece, which gives as much screen time to his co-stars, and which locates the narrative point-of-view with them far more Read more

  • A game of madness

    A game of madness

    I’ve never paid particular attention to Nicholas Hawksmoor’s famous London churches, although I am familiar with some of them. I have, however, become embroiled as a reader in a complex literary game which has been articulated around them, through the work of several writers. My first encounter was through Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell’s comic Read more