Four Oxford lectures on time, form, edge, and offer and reflection, reworked by Ali Smith into a hybrid of essay and fiction. A grieving narrator reads her late partner's unfinished lectures on books, poems, and art, and the two voices slowly merge into one conversation about how stories work.
Books mentioned in Artful (39)
Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens: “It was a Dickens novel, Oliver Twist, the old Penguin edition I'd had at university”
The Golden Bowl by Henry James: “got down Volume 1 of your old 1909 copy of Henry James's The Golden Bowl”
Troilus and Cressida by William Shakespeare: “Graham Greene on Shakespeare's felicity of form... a throwaway moment from Troilus and Cressida”
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert: “One of the most recent translators of Madame Bovary, Lydia Davis, notes”
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy: “Graham Greene, on reading War and Peace: 'What's the use of ever writing again'”
One Art by Elizabeth Bishop: “What was left of On Edge was a poem you'd typed out and printed up: One Art, by Elizabeth Bishop”
Lysistrata by Aristophanes: “Shaw's Pygmalion and Aristophanes's Lysistrata and the leads in My Fair Lady”
Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw: “Shirley Valentine and Shaw's Pygmalion and Aristophanes's Lysistrata”
Sweet Bird of Youth by Tennessee Williams: “the leads in My Fair Lady and in Tennessee Williams's Sweet Bird of Youth”
Odes by Horace: “Shakespeare's original source for Sonnet 55, Horace's Odes: exegi monumentum aere perennius”
Archaic Torso of Apollo by Rainer Maria Rilke: “in Rilke's poem Archaic Torso of Apollo (translated here by Stephen Mitchell)”
Crash by J. G. Ballard: “In an introduction to his 1973 novel Crash, written in the 90s”
The Unquiet Grave by Cyril Connolly: “like The Unquiet Grave, a Child Ballad from the early fifteenth century where a lover mourns on the grave of a lost love”
Not Marble: A Reconstruction by Edwin Morgan: “Put two poems together and they'll make a third: Not Marble: a Reconstruction”
Anecdote of the Jar by Wallace Stevens: “here's a jarring anecdote from Wallace Stevens: I placed a jar in Tennessee”
Sleepless Nights by Elizabeth Hardwick: “Alas, the heart is not a metaphor... Elizabeth Hardwick, from page 91 of a book that had the word Sleepless in the title”
Amores by Ovid: “'To give, it is a witty thing,' Ovid says, via Christopher Marlowe's translation of Elegies of Love”
At the Bay by Katherine Mansfield: “as one of Mansfield's characters in her story At the Bay can't help but exclaim”
The Shadow-Line by Joseph Conrad: “Joseph Conrad, in his 1917 novel, The Shadow-Line, sees a lack of time as a state of absolute childishness”
Antigone by Sophocles: “I was thinking about Antigone, the girl from Sophocles's Theban Plays who tried to bury her dead brother”
The Stone Raft by José Saramago: “In the opening lines of José Saramago's novel The Stone Raft”
Your Face Tomorrow by Javier Marías: “Javier Marías, in Volume 1 of his trilogy about surveillance and history, Your Face Tomorrow”
Aspects of the Novel by E. M. Forster: “'In a novel there is always a clock,' as EM Forster says in Aspects of the Novel”
Cymbeline by William Shakespeare: “Shakespeare's most powerful forms of magic and coincidence in his late plays, Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, The Tempest”
The Winter's Tale by William Shakespeare: “his late plays, Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, The Tempest”
The Tempest by William Shakespeare: “his late plays, Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, The Tempest”
Six Memos for the Next Millennium by Italo Calvino: “Italian Cumin says near end of his book Six Memos that letters of the alphabet, words, literatures, are combinations”
Ars Poetica by Czesław Miłosz: “'In the very essence of poetry there is something indecent,' Czesław Miłosz says in his poem Ars Poetica?”
In My Craft or Sullen Art by Dylan Thomas: “(DYLAN THOMAS, In My Craft or Sullen Art) quoted as section epigraph (epigraph)”
The Wedding Party by Boris Pasternak: “Boris Pasternak, via his translator Edwin Morgan in the poem The Wedding Party”
The Messenger God by Lavinia Greenlaw: “Lavinia Greenlaw, in this poem called The Messenger God, sees Mercury, Hermes, as god of response”
Edge by Sylvia Plath: “Sylvia Plath, in her poem Edge, one clearly heavily influenced by Rilke's Eurydice”
The Disquieting Muses by Sylvia Plath: “Like the nodding De Chirico heads in Sylvia Plath's The Disquieting Muses, you said”
Orpheus. Eurydice. Hermes. by Rainer Maria Rilke: “like it is in Rilke's Orpheus. Eurydice. Hermes., a poem whose title is already full of division and finality”
Character in Fiction by Virginia Woolf: “'On or about December 1910 human character changed,' she famously says in her 1924 essay Character in Fiction”
i thank You God for most this amazing day by E. E. Cummings: “EE Cummings is in no doubt about the answer in this sonnet: i thank You God for most this amazing day”
Man Equals Man by Bertolt Brecht: “'Don't try to hold on to the wave...' BERTOLT BRECHT (epigraph; sources note identifies Man Equals Man)”
The Sandal by Edwin Morgan: “A late poem by Edwin Morgan, The Sandal, does the same thing but this time for a poet”