Written for publication in The Guardian, In
My Good Books was a series of articles on the literary aspects
of biography, autobiography, and life-writing in general. The James
Fenton Website archives these articles in their entirety and with
all editorial deletions restored.
Visit the 'In My Good Books' Archive
"The Cherry Orchard Has to Come Down" (1996) -- To
celebrate The New York Review of Books' 35th Anniversary, James
Fenton, Robert Silvers, Jason Epstein, Susan Sontag, Jonathan Miller,
Darryl Pinckney, Joan Didion, Alma Guillermoprieto, and Elizabeth
Hardwick participated in an evening of Readings at the 92nd Street
Y. Visit the
New York Review of Books website to listen to the reading (9 mins).
'Of the Martian School.' New Statesman (20
October 1978): 520.
'The Manifesto against Manifestoes.' Poetry Review
73.3 (September 1983): 12-16.
'Hell
set to music.' The Guardian (16 July 2005) [Mandelstam's
reading of Dante].
'The
Play's the Thing.' The Guardian (23 July 2005) [Revival
of the opera The Mines of Sulphur, by Sir Richard Rodney Bennett].
'Sitting
Pretty.' The Guardian (3 September 2005) [Intriguing portraits
of writers and artists, some for sale in an upcoming auction].
'No
Song Without Words.' Times Literary Supplement (14 October
2005): 14 [The troubled relationship between librettists and composers].
'The
Sadist and the Stutterer.' The Guardian (2 December 2005)
[On Herman Melville's unfinished novella Billy Budd being turned
into a homoerotic opera].
'Nature
Boy.' New York Times Book Review (1 January 2006): 7 [Review
of Wordsworth: A Life by Juliet Barker. Note: Registration
may be required to view online].
'A
Poke in the Eye with a Poem.' The Guardian (21 October
2006) [Review of Horse Latitudes by Paul Muldoon].
' "Don't
ask, don't tell".' The Guardian (4 November 2006) [On poets
who address a lover of the same sex].
'Floral
Tributes.' The Guardian (30 December 2006) [Review of Botanical
Riches: Stories of Botanical Exploration by Richard Aitken].
'A
Voice of His Own.' The Guardian (3 February 2007) [Fenton
on W. H. Auden].
'Elizabeth
Bishop's Christian Sin.'The Times Literary Supplement (11
April 2007) [Bishop's 'The Unbeliever' & its source in Bunyan].
'Kingsley Amis: Against Fakery.' In The Movement
Reconsidered: Essays on Larkin, Amis, Gunn, Davie, and Their Contemporaries.
Ed. Zachary Leader. Oxford University Press, 2009. 106-122. (UK, US,
Canada)
