Oliver Arditi

Blog archive

  • What happens next?

    What happens next?

    Christopher Tolkien has probably now reached the end, in terms of publications at least, of his life-long project to edit and clarify his father’s huge opus of unfinished writings. He says that this book, Beren and Lúthien, will be the last, and as he is now 93 this seems plausible. This seems like an appropriate Read more

  • No spoilers (well, one)

    No spoilers (well, one)

    I’ve been mystified by Gene Wolfe for my entire adult life, and then some. His books are famously tricksy, with unreliable narrators, and hidden plots that we are supposed to unearth from clues distributed carefully through the text. This is not what I like them for, particularly, or perhaps it is, but it’s not the Read more

  • Short slick shred

    Short slick shred

    I didn’t know much about Frank Quitely until I went to an exhibition of his work in Glasgow last summer. Given that he’s an artist who works in the top tier of Anglo-American commercial comics this is not surprising: I pay very little attention to the sort of superhero rags he tends to draw, and Read more

  • Heroically strange

    Heroically strange

    And so The Prophet concludes. What started as the ostensible re-boot of a retired and obscure superhero can take its place on the library shelves as one of the most extraordinarily inventive science-fiction comics in the English-language tradition, and hopefully as an enduring element of the canon that is being forged in this second Golden Read more

  • Various Artists – Album Roundup

    Various Artists – Album Roundup

    It has been a long while since I reviewed any music: my life became rather full of obligations, which reduced my output and eventually halted it altogether. Between then and now I have had the chance to reflect on what had become a somewhat procedural activity, and I have reached a few decisions. From now… Read more

  • Various Artists – Singles and EPs

    Various Artists – Singles and EPs

    Finger-picked arpeggios fall with the regularity and impersonal melancholy of rain, offset by a vocal delivery that is hesitant not in its phrasing, but in its timbre. The sound of this four-song EP is intimate, extremely close to the listener’s ear, and it is formed from the kind of performative gestures in which the proximity… Read more