‘Sarah Kane slips easily into the mythic mould. She burst quickly on to the theatre scene: Blasted, in 1995, was an instant scandal. And, after writing four more plays – Phaedra’s Love, Cleansed, Crave and 4.48 Psychosis – over the next four years, she took her own life after a struggle with mental illness. Like the great Romantic poets, Kane was drawn to death. Like the 20th century’s icons – like Marilyn, like Jimmy – she died young. What greater end to the life of a young genius than suicide?
‘I suppose when a young artist commits suicide, leaving a relatively small body of work, it’s natural to want more. We know there are no more Sarah Kane plays to come, so people want more of her. We want to build up the myth. Her death leaves a vacuum that we want to fill. It’s an understandable instinct, but not a good one.
‘Kane’s plays have almost certainly achieved canonical status. All over the world, they are seen and admired. Almost since the arrival of Blasted, she has been regarded as the most important of the new British dramatists. No doubt some of the initial interest in her work was a wish to jump on the bandwagon of sensation that Blasted caused on its UK premiere, but with the passing of time Kane’s work has proved its significance.
‘There’s a danger that we see all of Kane’s work as one long preparation for suicide. We shouldn’t. Only the last play, 4.48 Psychosis, is a play written during her periods of depression and hospitalisation – and even there, the ending is ambiguous. There’s a glimmer of light – but in life or in death? Rather, I think we should look at the plays as the work of a writer of great anger, of sardonic humour, who saw the cruelties of the world but also the human capacity for love.’ — Mark Ravenhill, The Guardian
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4:48 Psychosis: Media
Trailer: UK/Royal Opera production
Turkish production
Excerpt: Russian production
Hong Kong production
Trailer: Finnish production
Georgian production
Trailer: German production
French production
Excerpt: Italian production
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Further
A Sarah Kane site by Iain Fisher
Sarah Kane Discussion Forum
Sarah Kane Biography
Sarah Kane interviewed
‘4:48 Psychosis’ Facebook Page
Buy Sarah Kane’ The Complete Plays’
Sarah Kane @ In-Yer-Face Theater
‘Sarah Kane is my Kurt Cobain’
Sarah Kane’s obituary @ The Observer
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4:48 Psychosis
‘Much has been written about the troubles of Sarah Kane, starting with the controversy following her first play, Blasted and then continuing long after her sudden suicide at age twenty-eight. For many she has become the classic tortured artist – perhaps to a fault. In his introduction to Sarah Kane: Complete Plays, her friend and colleague David Greig encourages us to focus on the literary qualities of Kane’s work rather than on the “mythology of the author” which he terms “a pointlessly forensic act”. This may be difficult with regard to Kane’s final play, 4:48 Psychosis, an abstract work that presents the mindscape of an individual contemplating suicide and was written just prior to Kane’s own. But to what extent the two events are coincidental or a true example of life imitating art is largely a matter of conjecture.
‘One thing is for certain, life under the conditions of 4:48 Psychosis would be an almost non-stop chorus of pain. The play was written during a period of deep depression in Kane’s life, an achievement Greig calls “positively heroic…an act of generosity” but he cautions against looking for clues to someone’s personal history based on the drifting and artificial evidence of a play. The very word play implies something in motion or imagined, like games and pretending. Other authors such as Ken Urban, have pointed out the difficulty, if not impossibility, of separating Kane’s personal life from the themes explored in 4:48 and that in this final play the author and the work are structurally intertwined. Reflecting on comments made by Kane’s literary agent, Mel Kenyon, Urban writes, “Because it is the play that, Kane joked, ‘killed’ her to write, at this particular historical moment, it is hard to read the play outside of biography. Mel Kenyon recently said in an interview, ‘I pretend that [4:48 Psychosis] isn’t a suicide note but it is. It is both a suicide note and something greater than that.’”’ — Mustafa Sakarya, ‘A Controlled Detonation‘
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The play
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Interview
by Aleks Sierz
When Sarah Kane was still alive, it was vital to support her work — her style was so raw, so provocative and so innovative that many critics simply didn’t get it. Some even called for it to be censored. So it was important to support her, almost without question. But, when the 28-year-old playwright committed suicide on 20 February 1999, everything changed. Now, suddenly everyone loved her. Now, she was an icon. Now, she was a secular saint. Critics fell over each other to recant — it was like an episode from some religious war.
Wars breed anecdotes. And it soon emerged that everyone has a Sarah Kane anecdote. So here’s mine. It’s about the interview I did with her for the chapter on her work for my first book, In-Yer-Face Theatre: British Drama Today, and it may, or may not, be the last interview she ever gave. In my 1998 diary, there’s an entry for 14 September: Kane, 12 noon, SW9 (the name of a cafe in Brixton, south London, where we both lived at the time). The diary also shows that, in the previous week, I’d seen the Paines Plough production of Kane’s Crave (8 September), and soon afterwards I saw Mark Ravenhill’s Handbag (18 September). Oh heady days.
We met at SW9 because Kane lived just around the corner in a flat which she shared with her friend David Gibson at 6A Bellefields Road. I arrived early, and remember standing apprehensively at the bar — I was a bit tense, a bit nervous. After all, I was a fortysomething journalist and couldn’t help thinking that the character of Ian, also a fortysomething journalist, in her debut Blasted expressed her hatred of all middle-aged men. In fact, when I’d spoken to her on the phone to arrange the meeting, she laughed: “I seem to be meeting a lot of middle-aged men recently.”
I was worried that she’d be as aggressive as her work suggested. I suppose this is an example of the biographical fallacy in reverse. In fact, when she arrived, right on time, she was smiling. Wearing a black leather jacket, and hip black clothes, she could barely disguise her sleepy eyes, and the fact that she’d just got out of bed. “Oh, it’s early for me,” she said. “I’ve been up all night writing.” It was the way she liked to work.
We drank coffee at a corner table by the window. The moment she sat down, she got out her cigarettes. She offered me one. No thanks, I said, I’m too afraid of cancer. “You’ve got more chance of dying from a heart attack from worrying about it,” she joked, lighting up. When Kane smoked, she held her cigarette behind her back so that the smoke wouldn’t blow into my eyes. This considerate behaviour reminded me that although her plays have lashings of violence, they are also full of gentleness. After all, her main theme is love.
During the interview, to explain the difference between plot and story visually, Sarah grabbed my questions from me and drew a diagram on the back.
Then Kane gave me back a copy of an academic article I’d written about Blasted and the politics of the new censorship, where the media leads the call for banning plays rather than, as in the past, the state (whose censorship of theatre ended decades ago in 1968). In her delicate handwriting, she’d made a couple of corrections: where I had written, “Kane deliberately sets out to create a godless universe”, she wrote: “I don’t know. God does make an appearance [in Blasted]. And there is life after death.”
Kane talked some more about her first play, pointing out that the final scene takes place in a metaphorical “hell”. “Don’t forget the stage direction that says ‘He dies with relief’,” she said. “Ian dies, so you think that’s the worst thing that can happen — then it rains on him.” It’s a moment that sums her sense of humour, bleak perhaps, but humorous definitely. And she enjoyed the fact that directions like this present a real challenge to directors of her work.
Showing me a passage where I had misquoted her, Kane corrected my garbled version by stating succinctly: “Theatre will always be a minority interest, but the lack of a mass audience is compensated for by the lack of direct censorship.” At various points during our meeting, which lasted about two hours, she would consult a small notebook, pointing out which journalists had misquoted her.
It was clear that Kane thought of her character Ian with a mixture of horror and affection. When I said that, as a middle-aged man, I recognised his psychology, and the way he tried to manipulate Cate, she was pleased. “Yes,” she said, “when I was at Birmingham, there was a middle-aged man on the MA and he defended my portrayal of Ian when the other students attacked it. And I thought that was brave of him.”
Of course, Kane understood that you can feel a sexual or a violent desire without necessarily acting on it. “It’s one thing to have an idea, it’s quite another to act on it. We all have some control over our actions.” But what about Cate? Well, she stressed the fact that Cate is not retarded, and — much as she loved this character — she was also a bit exasperated with her: “I mean, what’s she doing in that hotel room with Ian?” Still, Cate’s resilience was as important to Kane as her naivety.
When I asked Kane what she thought of the label “in-yer-face theatre”, she shrugged as if to say: “That’s your problem, mate, not mine.” Then she said: “At least it’s fucking better than New Brutalism.” No writer likes to be labelled as part of a movement, and Kane was especially sensitive to being categorised as anything other than a “writer”.
We talked about the performance of Blasted that I’d seen at the Royal Court. It was the second press night, and she asked me how many people had walked out. I told her that only a couple had left, but that many people had giggled nervously during the evening. She was pleased that the play had had a powerful effect, and told me that she had seen most performances.
Why did the critics hate the play so much? Kane explained their reaction by pointing out that “a play about a middle-aged male journalist who rapes a young woman and is raped and mutilated himself can’t have endeared me to a theatre full of middle-aged male critics”. She also felt that she’d had a hard time from critics because she was a woman. I disagreed. I think that because Blasted is such a powerfully written piece, experimental in structure and provocative in its portrayal of a contemporary English civil war, it made audiences uncomfortable, made them feel they were experiencing the emotions shown on stage. And that discomfort and disorientation confused the critics (poor souls) — so they took the easy way out, which was to attack her.
Kane felt that the emotional content of her work had been misunderstood. “Blasted is a hopeful play,” she said. She didn’t recognise herself in negative descriptions of her work. “I don’t find my plays depressing or lacking in hope,” she said. “But I’m someone whose favourite band is Joy Division because I find their songs uplifting. To create something beautiful about despair is for me the most life-affirming thing a person can do.”
Despite the fact that love was so important to her, Kane was also constantly aware of violence. She told me two anecdotes about life in Brixton. In the first, she’d been shopping in Iceland supermarket, and bumped into a black woman, who went mad and abused her: “She called me ‘a white bitch’. You know, black people can be as racist as whites.” And the other story was from when she once lived in Josephine Avenue, and was about a gay man who been attacked and arrived on her front doorstep gasping, with his head streaming blood.
I asked her again about 4:48 Psychosis and the form she was striving to create. She grabbed a piece of file paper from my desk and drew another diagram.
Kane also told me a story from when she was at Bristol university. Planning to study playwriting at Birmingham, she was compelled to pay a small sum for private health insurance. She wrote on the back of the cheque something along the lines of finding it fucking outrageous that to enter an educational institution she should be required to pay for private health insurance, to which she was deeply opposed. I mention this because I now think that the most important thing about her life was not her suicide, but the fact that she got a First Class Honours degree and an MA in drama — she was an intellectual. She loved plays. She loved theatre.
Kane hated giving interviews. At the end of our meeting, she told me she didn’t want to do any more. “I’m a writer,” she said. “I’d much prefer if you could send me letters, and I’ll write my replies to your questions.” In the next couple of months, she sent me a couple of letters about her plays, then silence. I carried on writing my book and, just as I was finishing the first draft of my chapter about her, I heard she’d killed herself. For a while I was shocked and couldn’t write any more about her, and even wondered whether to put her chapter in the past tense. In the end, I left it in the present.
Looking back, our meeting seems to be a characteristic mix of helpful kindness and full-on violent imagination that, in my mind, is the essence of Kane. Yet what haunted me afterwards was the frankness and openness of her personality. “Go on,” she said, “ask me anything.” At the time, I didn’t ask half the questions I wanted to. I thought we’d have plenty of time to talk about her work — I was wrong. I didn’t realise she was already planning her suicide. In June 2000, I talked to Robert Gore-Langton, a Daily Express journalist who’d interviewed her father about her suicide. He told me that he’d expected him to be defensive, but that in fact he was totally open. “Go on,” he’d said, “ask me anything.”
Like most people, Kane was a complex and occasionally contradictory human being: equally capable of being polite and aggressive, of being an introverted garret writer and an extrovert fun-loving woman, of loving moody, doomy music and supporting Man United, a colourful club, a winner’s club, of talking about “sucking gash” and of longing for love and tenderness, by turns honest, perceptive, provocative, sentimental and, yes, quite in-yer-face. Sometimes.
—-
*
p.s. Hey. ** JM, Hi, J. I’m happy Burstyn also works heavily for you. Thank you again and so much about ‘Closer’. Um, no, I don’t really think about what my work is doing out there in reality or whatever. It’s too mysterious to imagine. Something I love about books is that they seem to have an even more secretive life than other forms, I don’t know why. I guess because books, fiction and poetry in particular, are an entirely one-on-one experience, absolutely private, and even when people try to characterise the experience they had with a novel, say, for others, it’s always just a skim and soundbite of what happened. So what one hears about what one’s books do in the world can only be a tiny fraction of what they actually do. Or something. I always think of my work having a future, post-me, post-me being alive. I’ve always thought about that and somehow written with that unknowable future in mind, I guess because 90% of the books I loved when I was staring out where by long dead writers. The Qanon thing means nothing to me. There’s been this hatred or fear or whatever of my books from certain quarters from the beginning, and I don’t feel like I’ve ever learned anything from the reaction. Yeah, I think you are very fortunate when it comes to your leader, that seems really true. Really, what an intense and profound experience to have gone through, this virus spread. There’s so much there to think about and feel about that I, at least, can’t even begin to recognise and process, but the future will sort that out. Enjoy everything you can, and I’ll keep getting through the days as productively as possible and counting the hours until a fuller life of some new form starts. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. Unfortunately in the time you made that link to ‘Providence’ and now, the video got taken down, grr. Wish I could have shared. ‘Providence; is easily in my top 10 all-time favorite films, as I think you know, and it probably in the top 5. ** _Black_Acrylic, Cool beans! (What a weird saying). ** Steve Erickson, I kind of don’t have much doubt that the new Apple is very good, but, yeah, the Bernie Bro-style fandom that it’s getting right out of the gate is making me put my personal experience with it out there on the horizon. I’ll go find Herz’s BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, thank you for the tip. ** Dominik, Hi!!! He knows his way around cold noodles, that’s for sure. Oh, it’s so easy to confuse the producer thing, especially with my lazy descriptions. Thank you for the fingers crossing. It would be really good if we get that grant, for sure, but not a big tragedy if we don’t. The gallery show thing would be for a future, real world actual exhibition once life re-begins enough to allow that. Ha ha, yeah, I don’t know why that Blink 182 song popped into my head. I do really like it. Yesterday I … hm, Zac suddenly decided he couldn’t take empty Paris anymore, so he managed to find a flight to Nice where he’ll hold up with his mom until the quarantine ends, so we checked in re: that. Worked on some GIF things, which didn’t go well, but oh well. I started answering an emailed interview. I went down another youtube wormhole re: another favorite band of the past (70s), in this case Family, featuring the very particular, love-it-or-hate-it — I love it — braying goat-like vocals of the great Roger Chapman. For example. And, uh, not much else, sadly. Today, yours? Trade you for mine. Love with a sexy lazy eye, Dennis. ** Misanthrope, Duh’s the word. I keep up too, I just don’t believe anything I hear until it’s had time to prove itself correct. The news is too hysterically framed right now to be trusted, by me at least. Yeah, weird, the concentration. I think I underestimated how strolls around town and interacting with other humans is key to a brain’s brightness. ** Kyler, Ah, here you are on a day when I launch a new post about your friend Sarah Kane. Burstyn’s really great, yeah, pretty much in everything I’ve seen, not only the many great films she’s been a part of. She even makes her portions of films by directors I cannot stand like Aronofsky and Nolan worth waiting for. Glad your mood is up. I guess mine is fairly up, at least compared to a lot of people I know. I have a number of friend asking me how I can be so cheerful, so I guess so. ** Dom Lyne, Hi, Dom! Good to see you, pal. Oh, I think I’m holding up fairly well, all things considered. A bit grumpier and more bored than I normally am. The quiet is insane, right? I’m kind of really into it, but knowing it’ll end helps. Oh, man, that’s intense, and I’m so sorry about the episode you sent through. Especially in this situation. But I’m obviously happy to hear that you’re virtually righted now. Oh, wow! You made a GIF poem! High five. I’ve only just scrolled through it rapidly right now when I’m in need of finishing this, but it looks great! And I’ll pore through it very soon. Everyone, The writer, artist, musician and many things Dom Lyne made a GIF poem! A person after my own heart, obviously. Go luxuriate in its fun and much more by merely clicking this. Excellent, man! Well, you are being very productive, and I have to tell you I’m feeling some serious envy over here ‘cos I’m overly vagued out these days. Great news all the way around! Like I said, I’m trying to work, and getting a bit done. Re: the film, the lockdown has just slowed down the fund raising process a little, more than a little, which is annoying because I’m impatient to have the money in hand to make it, but things are still on course. Thanks for asking. Have the best day humanly possible! Love and holographic hugs, me. ** Okay. I did a post on my old, dead blog about Sarah Kane’s play, but when I went back to restore it, I thought it was weak, so I made a whole new one. That’s it. Fend as you will. See you tomorrow.
Now available in North America 
*
Hi Dennis, strange to wake up to depression today, perhaps because of too much wine last night, right after telling you about good moods, and then to see Sarah. It all seems fitting. So much I can say about Sarah of course (and the main characters in my novel Mercury’s Choice see 4.48 in London), but a few things. I think I told you I was at the first performance of 4.48. I had read the play earlier that day in Earl’s Court Cemetery. They gave me a copy that wasn’t supposed to be released yet, so I took it to the cemetery and cried of course. The ending of the play in London (but not unfortunately in the US tour) – after the last line, “Please open the curtains” – was a real coup de theatre: they opened the whole side wall of the theatre, showing the evening view of Sloane Square outside – and we all lost it completely. I loved that ending but her agent told me after that Sarah wouldn’t have liked the staging, that it ended the play with too much hope, that Sarah didn’t want any hope. I disagreed with her; I thought Sarah would have loved the walls of the theatre to be removed, opening up the theatre where we had been sitting.
Thanks so much for the introduction to Kane, what a loss. 4:48 worked very well for me on the page, looked written to work well on the page. Felt related to some very sad semi-autobiographical Pessoa poems I’ve been reading recently… oddly enough in the voice of a middle-aged man. I’m puzzled in a very fundamental way by the literary speaker vs. author question. I’d be the first to say the literary speaker is an entity existing only on the page no matter how similar to the author’s biography, but I’m not always so sure how necessary or useful this distinction really is…
I’m with you on the secretive life of books. I’ve felt a huge sense of relief and surge in creative and intellectual energy since leaving film school…so much more time to actually think about art rather than logistics.
Re: your podcast interview. I listened to Leonard Cohen’s “Queen Victoria” and I don’t think “I am dirty as a glass roof in a train station” is such a bad line. The image worked for me, made me think of what was considered new and grand in Victorian times but is now drab and cliched, the train stations now less important and overshadowed by skyscrapers.
Well that’s really shitty about “Providence” being taken down. I’ts one of the greatest movies of all time, IMO. It may be available on video across the pond but not here in the U.S.
Regarding Sarah Kane — Anger is not enough. As for dying young, suicide is a lot different than early death from external causes like AIDS (eg. Bernard-Marie Koltes) Kane reminds be a bit of Chantal Ackerman (who killed herself after the passing of her mother to whom she was intensely close) But as Eve Babitz reminds us “Death is The Last Word in other people having fun without you.”
I remember the precursor to this post, I think. Some of the videos of subsequent productions look incredible. Will definitely followup soon.
Saw Steevee’s review of Beauty and the Beast on letterboxd (Mike Kitchell is also a fan), and had trouble hunting down a stream. Great to see it’s on rarefilmm, thanks!
I’ve mostly been bumbling along in my distracted way. They’re mandating wearing masks in more situations here (entering shops and restaurants, public transit), so I’m playing with ideas for masks.
Just saw this today, a video interview with House of Automata from Scotland:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wri0X_cHyDA
Also, Chicago’s Experimental Sound Studio is streaming a bunch of live new music quarantine concerts. Here’s the recent one from David Grubbs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxeG_SJBTvU
Bill
Hi!!
Oh, yes, it’s so optimistic, that you’re planning a real, actual, “physical” art show. I don’t mind spending so much time at home but even like this, it does great things to my soul!
I hope all’s gonna go well with Zac’s trip to Nice! I guess rules and regulations must be very strict at and around airports now, no? When does he leave?
I love the voice of Roger Chapman too though I have to admit I’ve only heard maybe 2 or 3 Family songs my entire life…
Uh, today I’m… in a decidedly bitchy mood and though I had some plans for the day, I gave them all up and just read. And… that was my day, really. How was yours?
Love as skinny as an aye-aye’s middle finger!
“Some will know the simple fact of pain”
Fuck, Sarah Kane always hits hard. What a fucking storm of a writer. I loved this post, Dennis.
Dennis, Great day.
Btw, how can you be so cheerful?
Oh, yeah, I don’t take things at face value. I do a bunch of research. And not just with this stuff. Anything. I hear something of interest and I’m off to the races.
And part of it, too, which you’ve mentioned before, is how you go out now and everybody looks at you like the potential Patient Zero that’s going to kill them and their families. Everybody’s so on edge or something.
Then again, there are those people I pass by who just smile and roll their eyes. I can’t leave them out. 😀
Hi Dennis! Quinn here, hope you’re doing well. I’ve never heard of Sarah Kane, actually, this is the first I am learning of her. Her work sounds super fascinating, and the excerpt you’ve shared is really quite great. Do you know if there are any full length recordings of her play online? Rest in peace to her–I’ve struggled with depression and suicidal ideation for most of my life, yet I don’t really ever write about it. I guess for a long time I just felt that no one really cares to hear about it, or that the material can become sentimental or manipulative. I’m getting a little depressed lately, actually, which is understandable I guess. I also just got into this weird situation with a guy I was hooking up with; he’d told me he was in an open relationship, but a few days ago his partner messaged me and basically told me they were actually in a rough patch & asked me not to encourage him. So I guess I just feel weird about that too. I don’t really understand people or know how to read their intentions, get along with them very well, and I’m really gullible. So on one hand I feel lonely but on the other hand I find socializing super draining. Weird kind of switch but from reading this post it sounds that Sarah Kane also found certain aspects of social life pretty draining. Do you have a low tolerance for socializing? Under normal conditions that is, not in the midst of a global pandemic and quarantine…..
Congratulations on your gif stories in Artforum! I really loved em. I see on your blog that you’ve postponed your theatre performance. I hope you’re not too disappointed about that. I’ll watch out to see what date you reschedule it for & maybe I can rebook my Paris ticket for then. It certainly looks like I won’t be traveling to Europe next month, a little bit of a bummer for me. Really just such a strange time overall. How are you doing otherwise? Also, I haven’t finished Madame Bovary yet but I started Hogg by Samuel Delany and I’m enjoying it a lot. I also ordered Mark Doten’s novel Trump Sky Alpha, I didn’t realize he used to comment on your blog, I’m curious to read his fiction. Hope you’re keeping relatively sane!
I watched another Juraj Herz film tonight, FERAT VAMPIRE. It’s about a vampiric car that lives off blood it sucks through the accelerator pedal, and as one person wrote on Letterboxd, it’s more Cronenbergian than any film I’ve seen not made by Cronenberg. I’m sure he saw it before making CRASH and possibly even VIDEODROME (it was made in 1981.) But there’s a very Eastern European drabness over it, and it relies too much on its conceptual brilliance.
I’m now working on both my Perfume Genius and Car Seat Headrest reviews. Unexpectedly, the former has one song which reminds me of the Caretaker. The latter is much stranger than I expected. Some of it, like their current single “Hollywood,” sounds like ugly crap, honestly. But the mix and production are really bizarre for a band in their position, with drums loaded with echo and panning from left to right in the mix. (On one song, I thought I had left my digital audio workstation app on and the album was playing through its FX, but that’s the way it was supposed to sound.) Like almost every rock band, they’re experimenting with electronics and programmed beats, but it doesn’t sound like they really know what they’re doing, which sometimes leads to interesting results.
My parents have read every book in their house and complain about watching hours of TV without finding anything they haven’t already seen. But discussing Netflix or streaming movies with them, and trying to expand their options, is really weird and frustrating. When I talked to my mom tonight, I said “I’m in the middle of season 2 of SCHITT’S CREEK on Netflix,” and she didn’t seem to get the idea of a TV show you can watch and pause any time you want.
I was very happy to walk past the indie health food grocery I used to shop at tonight and see they’ve reopened. Now I don’t have to give Jeff Bezos all my money!
This is fucking awesome! I’ve got a contract for a book on the various styles of professional wrestling and I’m writing about deathmatches via Kane and Artaud right now. Very grateful you put this together. Hope all is well for you!
Man, this rules, thank you so much for sharing. Blake shared her book awhile ago on Twitter so I checked it out and watched some videos of her stuff online, just amazing. I’m contracted to write a book on pro wrestling styles for Reaktion this year and I’ve been writing on Kane and Artaud related to deathmatch wrestling. I realized that I don’t think my comments previously had been posting. I thought you hadn’t responded for some reason but then I checked and I don’t think they go through on my phone. Did you get a copy of Peripatet? If not I’d love to send you one when this all dies down. The ITC books are free ebooks too if you’re interested. I hope this finds you well all things considered!
Not sure why my comments haven’t been posting, hopefully this one will. I hope this finds you well. Love Sarah Kane. Started reading her after Blake posted her book awhile ago. Writing on her and Artaud related to deathmatch wrestling for my wrestling book I’m writing right now. Did you ever receive Peripatet? If not I’d love to send you one after this stuff dies down. Also, all Inside the Castle books are free pdfs if you’re interested. I hope this finds you well Dennis!
-Grant
Wow. I really want to read 4.48 Psychosis. I always avoided it in the book of Sarah Kane plays that I used to have. I read all the others over and over (Crave especially, for some reason). Perhaps I felt that it was too intense and that I wasn’t sure I could handle it. Wonderful post today. // I’m well thanks. How are you, other than being bored? I don’t think I could live without the internet right now either, good job I decided to beg it to take me back not long before all this. I was researching, I don’t know, this and that, mainly just reading things I’d been curious about for a long time but not actually gotten around to. And a load of new things that I found out about via The New Centre, ie the pay-as-you-go online grad school that Reza Negarestani and friends run. Interesting seeing which kinds of authors are de rigeur among continental philosophy types at the moment. Not what I would’ve imagined: quite dry mid-century analytic philosophers for the most part. Came across some good fiction via that too – Ibrahim al-Koni for example. At the moment I’m working on some translations of Eugène Savitzkaya’s poems – do you know his stuff? He was a friend of Hervé Guibert’s and crops up in a few of his books under a pseudonym, I think. I had tried to read some of Savitzkaya’s novellas before and didn’t really get them, but then I read a great prose poem called “In Memory of Tabacchino”, which was translated online somewhere by Edward Gauvin, and then the poems in his Editions de Minuit collections, which are just so great. Anyway… I’ve missed the blog. Looking forward to reading it regularly again.