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J. S. Tennant
J.S. Tennant is a contributing editor at The White Review.

Articles Available Online


Luis Goytisolo’s ‘Recounting’

Book Review

March 2018

J. S. Tennant

Book Review

March 2018

In June last year the Spanish novelist Juan Goytisolo (interviewed in The White Review in 2014) died in Marrakesh, his home for decades. While his reputation never waned...

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Issue No. 20

From a Cuban Notebook

J. S. Tennant

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Issue No. 20

Beneath the rain, beneath the smell, beneath all that is a reality a people makes and unmakes itself leaving...

On a Tuesday afternoon in July, not too long ago, a friend of mine struck a pose imitating a self-portrait of the psychedelic Italian painter Pontormo We were having lunch on a patch of grass outside some library near Russell Square In his self portrait, a goatee’d Pontormo levels one sweaty finger at the fourth wall, his hips half-cocked and his closest leg a little kinked, the whole thing oozing sex and transgression Picture Johnny Depp meets Ewan McGregor Picture dolled-up sixteenth century facial hair Now picture: speedo, because that’s all Pontormo’s wearing – that and an expression that says he knows it   My friend (call her Annabel) was not wearing only-a-speedo, but I still felt a lump in my throat as if I’d swallowed a beating heart I thought about telling her how good she looked, but I thought about a lot of things: how the hell I’d ended up in London, seven thousand kilometres from home; how a train stays on its tracks by sheer friction; why the Victorians ever thought it a good idea to import a tree that smells like semen[1] Mostly, though – at least, that Tuesday in July – I thought about ways to talk to Annabel I’m a fiction writer by trade, a modest purveyor of sweeping narrative, reticent dialogue, and moments of emotional revelation, but like a story never translates seamlessly from idea to paper, so too does it not translate seamlessly from paper to voice Take that from somebody who knows[2]   But those seeking a tale of romance and bared hearts should seek elsewhere, because this is an essay on voice, not girls Or rather, this is an essay on the poor comparison of voice and talking, and possibly on the failure of translation between the two – though in the examples to follow, the latter is nobody’s fault but my own   I’m going to make a bold claim and say voice is one of the most cited but least understood stylistic elements that readers respond to in fiction Name a few good books and you’ll find someone raving about the

Contributor

August 2014

J. S. Tennant

Contributor

August 2014

J.S. Tennant is a contributing editor at The White Review.

Interview with Juan Goytisolo

Interview

November 2014

J. S. Tennant

Interview

November 2014

Juan Goytisolo is one of Spain’s leading writers, but one with a fraught relationship with his home country, to put it mildly. The Mexican novelist Carlos...

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Art

October 2014

For the Motherboard

Vanessa Hodgkinson

James Bridle

Art

October 2014

Please click on the links below to download, print and assemble (instructions in slideshow above) Vanessa Hodgkinson’s For the Motherboard:...

Art

September 2014

On the Ground

Teju Cole

Art

September 2014

I visited Palestine in early June 2014, just before the latest wave of calamity befell its people. For eight...

Art

November 2016

The Green Ray

Agnieszka Gratza

Art

November 2016

I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven. Walt Whitman, Leaves...

 

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