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The Good of the Novel

Page 25

by Liam McIlvanney


  MARY HAWTHORNE is a staff writer on The New Yorker.

  KEVIN JACKSON is the author of many books including, most recently, The Pataphysical Flook (2007), The Book of Hours (2007), Lawrence of Arabia (2007) and Moose (2009). He has written widely on film, photography, modern art, literature, language and cultural history, and is the author of a biography of Humphrey Jennings.

  ROBERT MACFARLANE is a critic, essayist and travel writer. He is the author of Mountains of the Mind (2003), Original Copy (2007) and The Wild Places (2007), and he writes for the Guardian, the Times Literary Supplement, the New York Times and Harper’s Magazine, among other publications.

  LIAM MCILVANNEY was born in Ayrshire. He is the Stuart Professor of Scottish Studies at the University of Otago, New Zealand. He won the Saltire First Book Award for Burns the Radical in 2002, and his work has appeared in the Times Literary Supplement and the London Review of Books. He lives in Dunedin with his wife and four sons. All the Colours of the Town, his first novel, was published in 2009.

  BENJAMIN MARKOVITS is a novelist and freelance writer whose essays, reviews, stories and poems have appeared in Granta, the New York Times and the London Review Books, among other publications. He is the author of six novels, including a trilogy on the life of Lord Byron: Imposture (2007), A Quiet Adjustment (2008), and Childish Loves (2011). He lives in London with his wife and two children, and teaches at Royal Holloway.

  ANDREW O’HAGAN’S books include The Missing (1995), Our Fathers (1999), Personality (2003), Be Near Me (2006), A Night out with Robert Burns (editor, 2008) and a book of essays, The Atlantic Ocean (2008). His most recent novel is The Life and Opinions of Maf the Dog, and of His Friend Marilyn Monroe.

  RAY RYAN is author of Ireland and Scotland: Literature and Culture, State and Nation, 1966–2000, editor of Writing in the Irish Republic: Literature, Culture, Politics, 1949–1999, and, with Liam McIlvanney, co-editor of Ireland and Scotland: Culture and Society, 1700–2000.

  IAN SANSOM is the author of a number of works of fiction and nonfiction, including The Truth About Babies (2002) and Ring Road (2004).

  FRANCES WILSON is a critic and biographer. Her books include Literary Seductions: Compulsive Writers and Diverted Readers (1999), The Courtesan’s Revenge: Harriette Wilson, the Woman who Blackmailed the King (2005) and The Ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth (2008).

  JAMES WOOD is Professor of the Practice of Literary Criticism at Harvard University. His books include The Broken Estate: Essays in Literature and Belief (1999), Selected Shorter Fiction of D. H. Lawrence (1999), The Book Against God (2003) and The Irresponsible Self: On Laughter and the Novel (2004).

  MICHAEL WOOD is the Charles Barnwell Straut Professor of English and Professor of Comparative Literature at Princeton University. His works include books on Stendhal, Garcia Marquez, Nabokov, Kafka, and films. He is a widely published essayist with articles on film and literature in Harper’s, London Review of Books, New York Review of Books, New York Times Book Review, New Republic and others. His latest book is Literature and the Taste of Knowledge (2005).

  About the Author

  LIAM MCILVANNEY was born in Ayrshire. He is the Stuart Professor of Scottish Studies at the University of Otago, New Zealand. He won the Saltire First Book Award for Burns the Radical in 2002, and his work has appeared in the Times Literary Supplement and the London Review of Books. He lives in Dunedin with his wife and four sons. All the Colours of the Town, his first novel, was published in 2009.

  RAY RYAN is author of Ireland and Scotland: Literature and Culture, State and Nation, 1966–2000, editor of Writing in the Irish Republic: Literature, Culture, Politics, 1949–1999, and, with Liam McIlvanney, co-editor of Ireland and Scotland: Culture and Society, 1700–2000.

  Copyright

  First published in 2011

  by Faber and Faber Ltd

  Bloomsbury House

  74–77 Great Russell Street

  London WC1B 3DA

  This ebook edition first published in 2011

  All rights reserved

  Introduction © Liam McIlvanney and Ray Ryan, 2011

  Copyright in individual essays remains with the contributors

  The right of Liam McIlvanney and Ray Ryan to be identified as editors of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly

  ISBN 978–0–571–27185–6

 

 

 


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