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David Isaacs
David Isaacs has recently completed a PhD about the ethics of rewriting at UCL. He is coming to the end of a first novel and is at the early stages of a new project about the present tense.


Articles Available Online


Interview with Namwali Serpell

Interview

December 2020

David Isaacs

Interview

December 2020

Namwali Serpell is a rarity: an academic and novelist whose criticism is as vital as her fiction. Since we first spoke, in September 2020,...

Book Review

June 2018

Christine Schutt’s ‘Pure Hollywood’

David Isaacs

Book Review

June 2018

There is a certain kind of American novelist of the late twentieth century whose fiction fetishises plant names. The...

JOY OF THE EYES   The future is not the beginning, but the forerunner, of a new intense-formation   The first time that you see me, you will see me, without implication of time   The future expresses what is going to take place at some time to come, adding on the one hand an implication of will or intention, on the other hand of promise or threatening   If you, villain, had not stopped [prāgrahīṣyaḥ] my mouth, Without any implication of time   Circles of future and desiderative border one another; the one sometimes expected where the other might be met   I, conditional, want you to stop my mouth; will you stop My mouth encircles the sustain of these refusals: Sometimes and unexpected, unreasonable and polite   If you, beautiful, would perceive this new stress-formation, Reducing the noise of our [śyas] tomorrow, Heads shaved, future universe, ‘victorious banners unlowered’   Discipline of desire begins in the mouth         PENSIVE REFLECTION   Imagine a time in which you feel happy In your happiness, you imagine another time in which you feel unhappy You are in bed, your love is in your arms; the room is cold and it belongs to you   This is the tower of the past The battlements are formed of anthills, the anthills the curves of the goddess, the curves snakes agreeing sealing themselves away Lookouts lie face down, mouths open to the earth, swallowing the matter of their warnings Lookouts are snakes   In your unhappiness, you imagine another time in which you feel happy You are standing, you catch sight of your love across the room One or both of you is wearing a uniform The room is warm; it does not belong to you   The tower is oversaturated and impossible to date Lookouts’ mouths fill with earth, earth itching, itching converting warning to retch Lookouts reduce the noise of their retching; snakes containing the warnings in the smoothed lines of their swallows   This is how to conjugate the old future tense    

Contributor

August 2014

David Isaacs

Contributor

August 2014

David Isaacs has recently completed a PhD about the ethics of rewriting at UCL. He is coming to the end...

Prize Entry

April 2017

Pylons

David Isaacs

Prize Entry

April 2017

Once upon a time, Dad would begin, I think, focusing on the road, there was a man called Watt....

Seasickness

Prize Entry

April 2016

David Isaacs

Prize Entry

April 2016

‘How would you begin?’   She puts a finger to her lips, a little wrinkled still from the water, and hesitates. She says, ‘Maybe:...
How things are falling.

Prize Entry

April 2015

David Isaacs

Prize Entry

April 2015

i.   Oyster cards were first issued to members of the British public in July 2003; by June 2015 they will have been replaced...
by Accident

fiction

April 2014

David Isaacs

fiction

April 2014

[To be read aloud]   I want to begin – and I hope I don’t come across as autistic or anything like that (and...

READ NEXT

feature

February 2015

A Closer Joan

Shawn Wen

feature

February 2015

Here are a few of the Joans I know. The girl who arrives at Port Authority Bus Terminal in...

feature

February 2011

The dole, and other bailouts

Chris Browne

feature

February 2011

One of my first actions as a Londoner was to sign on for as many benefits as I could...

Art

August 2016

False shadows

Izabella Scott

Art

August 2016

The ‘beautiful disorder’ of the Forbidden City and the Yuanmingyuan (Garden of Perfection and Light) was first noted by...

 

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