On working class fiction
In this essay from 2011, novelist DD Johnston presents a communist analysis of the definition and purpose of working class fiction.
Last week, for the second time in my life, I found myself agreeing with Margaret Thatcher. The first time was many years ago, in the mid-1980s, when Thatcher was briefly my hero. I was a timid child, who suffered from a speech impediment, and it had never occurred to me that free school milk was in any way optional.
Working class literature - reading guide
Libcom.org's reading guide on literature with a focus on work and accurate representations of working class life, culture and resistance to power.
American
Alfred Bester
- The Stars My Destination - In a world where transportation is possible with a thought, prisoners break free, economies crash and the slums emptied. Gully Foyle is marooned in space with a material that could destroy the universe. He has to give it away, but to who?
Against prison studies without capitalism: "The strange career of The New Jim Crow" - Joseph D. Osel
In this analysis Osel provides a devastating and radical analysis of The New Jim Crow. He asks social justice advocates to take a stand against prison studies that do include an analysis of capitalism and reflects on the significance of the "counterrevolutionary protest" in social justice work, describinghow social justice advocates "sustain societal problems even while challenging them." His essay challenges anti-prison activists and others to observe and analyze "their own complicity with and legitimization of the structures that they seek to dismantle."
Quote:
“The demand for our facilities and services could be adversely affected by the relaxation of enforcement efforts, leniency in conviction or parole standards and sentencing practices or through the decriminalization of certain activities that are currently proscribed by our criminal laws.
Joke Kaviaar, activist/ publicist, under attack by Dutch state - solidarity needed
Submitted by rooieravotr on Jan 12 2013 01:10
Joke Kaviaar, writer/ poet/ anarchist/activist, had been put on trial by the Dutch state for íncitement against public order'. The charge is based on four articles she wrote and published on het website, in which she strongly criticized the oppression, detention and deportation of migrants/ refugees/ people without papers, and called for active resistance aganist these policies
Joke Kaviaar, writer/ poet/ anarchist/activist, had been put on trial by the Dutch state for íncitement against public order'. The charge is based on four articles she wrote and published on het website, in which she strongly criticized the oppression, detention and deportation of migrants/ refugees/ people without papers, and called for active resistance against these policies.
Samuel Beckett's MOLLOY
How do we understand MOLLOY? Bourgeois professors would have you believe that Beckett's prose concentrated on telling us how meaningless life is.
Wobbly times number 160
Of course, we all end up dead. What's the point?
Spectacular Times
Partial archive of a series of small 'pocketbooks' in the late 1970s/early 1980s entitled 'Spectacular Times' by Larry Law. They serve as a brief introduction to situationist ideas. Each consists of newspaper clippings, quotations, handwritten text by Law and illustrations, all compiled and arranged with great humour!
Taken from http://nntk.net/main.php?g2_itemId=251 to make reading and sharing easier. If you have any of the other issues of these pocketbooks please let us know over e-mail or by commenting below, as we would love to complete this archive.
Freedom must be saved
Submitted by working class s... on Jul 19 2012 00:52
The potential closure of an iconic publication such as ‘Freedom’ is an absolute travesty, and would be in whatever circumstances that it may have arisen. However, the reasons for which it found itself in such a perilous financial state makes me feel sick to the pit of my stomach.
Freedom was founded in 1886 by a group of volunteers, and despite format changes, is still in publication today, 125 years from when it first appeared. Freedom has been written and edited by some of the most legendary figures in the movement, and has a well-deserved reputation.
Towards a futurology of the present - Marco Cuevas-Hewitt
Marco Cuevas-Hewitt outlines an emerging practice amongst radical writers; one entailing an attentiveness to intimations of alternative futures arising in the present. This "futurology of the present", as he calls it, represents a significant break with the hackneyed jeremiads and manifestos of earlier political generations, which limit themselves either to a simple negation of the present or to the authoritarian prescription of an idealised future. Delving into questions around the role of artists and writers in social movements and wider society, Cuevas-Hewitt's goal is a re-imagining of radical politics and a re-tooling of radical writerly practice.
‘Tomorrow never happens, man’ – Janis Joplin[1]
The Detective Novel by João Bernardo
An original thought-provoking essay on the Detective Novel and in particular the thriller, as regards action and isolation by Joao Bernardo translated from the Portuguese.
The Detective Novel
By João Bernardo.
(Translated from the Portuguese by Phil Meyler)
1. The Action.
Common's luck - a film on Jack Common by John Mapplebeck
Submitted by Red Marriott on Feb 11 2012 13:52
Jack Common wrote brilliant novels, film scripts and essays of radical social comment, all rooted in his early 20th century working class Geordie upbringing. Later a friend of George Orwell, he led a life of literary obscurity and persistent material poverty, but left us some of the most perceptive commentary and description of working class life of his time. His novels (or, more accurately, autobiographies in novelistic form) also offer some of the best recollections of life unfolding through the eyes of a child.
"[i]John Mapplebeck's film Common's Luck begins with a letter seeking employment written by Willy Kiddar, a thinly-veiled self-portrait of the young Jack Common. Tom Pickard's readings from Kiddar's Luck form part of the narrative of the film.
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