Works of and on John Yount

Novels

Wolf at the Door: 1st ed. Random House, 1967; 2nd ed. Open Road, 2014. Elizabeth Collamore, Hartford Courant (11 June 1967); Henry Mitchell, New York Times (2 July 1967); Harold M. Grutzmacher, Chicago Tribune (16 July 1967); Robert Granat, Chicago Tribune (10 September 1967).

The Trapper’s Last Shot: 1st ed. Random House, 1973; 2nd ed. Open Road, 2014. SKO, Newsweek (8 October 1973); Mel Watkins, New York Times (17 February 1974); Irving R. Post, Boston Globe (17 March 1974); Barbara Bourke, Irish Times (7 September 1974); Christopher Bickers, Red and Black (16 January 1975).

Hardcastle: 1st ed. Richard Marek, 1980; 2nd ed. Southern Methodist University Press, 1992; 3rd ed. Open Road, 2014. — Reviews: Raymond Carver, Chicago Tribune (18 May 1980); Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, New York Times (23 May 1980); Elaine Kendal, Los Angeles Times (1 June 1980); Jim Marks, Washington Post (27 June 1980); Bruce Allen, Christian Science Monitor (11 August 1980); Paul Darcy Boles, Atlanta Constitution (19 October 1980); John Gabree, Newsday (20 January 1985).

Toots in Solitude: 1st ed. St. Martin’s/Marek, 1984; 2nd ed. Southern Methodist University Press, 1995; 3rd ed. Open Road, 2014. — Reviews: Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, New York Times (24 January 1984); Dan Cryer, Newsday, (26 January 1984); Bette Pesetsky, New York Times (29 January 1984); Wiliam K. Robertson, Hartford Courant (22 February 1984);

Thief of Dreams: 1st ed. Viking Penguin, 1991; 2nd ed. Southern Methodist University Press, 1994; 3rd ed. Open Road, 2014. Rosellen Brown, New York Times (17 March 1991); Douglas Seibold, Chicago Tribune (7 April 1991); John Schulian, Los Angeles Times (7 April 1991); Katherine A. Powers, Washington Post (5 May 1991).

 

Other

‘Walker Percy’s Funhouse Mirror: More True than Distorted,’ Chicago Tribune (27 February 1977).

Works of and on Rudolph Friedmann

Rudolph Friedmann was a bookseller and writer. His writing is consistently experimental in form. He typically combines essay and fictional narrative. The one overwhelming influence on his writing was Sigmund Freud; though as is evident from the following, existentialism, especially Kirkegaard, is also important for him. Gershon Legman, in No Laughing Matter, describes his work as ‘poetic or “aphoristic” analysis.’

Very little has been written about him. He appears in the background of a few works of literary history and biography: see section 2. Read those to see why I am fascinated by him.

Updated 11 February 2026.

Works of and on John Horne Tooke

The following is a very — extremely! — incomplete list of works by and about John Horne Tooke, the Radical political botherer, also a very interesting philologist and, I think it is fair to say, in view of his Diversions of Purley, philosopher, or at least moralist. I have included very little of what he wrote so far. I shall get to it eventually.

Updated 14 January 2026.

The Development of the Diversions of Purley

Coleridge (Specimens of the Table-Talk, 7 May 1830), says that Horne Tooke ‘had that clearness which is founded on shallowness. … His mind had no progression or developement. All that is worth any thing … in the Diversions of Purley is contained in a short pamphlet-letter which he addressed to Mr. Dunning; then it was enlarged to an octavo … at last, a quarto volume, I believe, came out; and yet … there was no addition to the argument of the pamphlet.’ Coleridge’s judgment of the Diversions is unjust; though given that it is an untimely sort of work the force of whose insights is more easily registered after the intervening two centuries of moral and psychological criticism, the blunder is forgivable.

Works of and on Laura Del-Rivo

An inexhaustive list, which I shall continue to improve, of works by and about Laura Del-Rivo. Last updated 4 February 2026.

Novels

The Furnished Room. 1st ed. London: Hutchinson, 1961. 2nd ed. London: Pan, 1963. 3rd ed. Nottingham: Five Leaves Publications, 2011. — Translations: Dutch [as De Kamer Bewoner] (Leiden: Sijthoff’s Uitgeversmaatschappij, 1962); Spanish [as West 11] (Gijón, Asturias: Colectivo Bruxista, 2023). — Reviews and analyses: Isabel Quigly, Guardian (18 August 1961); Olivia Manning, Spectator (18 August 1961); Vernon Fane, Sphere (2 September 1961); E. D. O’Brien, Illustrated London News (16 September 1961); R. G. G. Price, Punch (20 September 1961); Kirkus Reviews (15 June 1962); Martin Levin, New York Times (8 July 1962); Nicholas Tredell, London Fictions (July 2013); Nicholas Tredell, Literary Encyclopedia (24 July 2013); Nicholas Tredell, Girl Gangs, Biker Boys and Real Cool Cats (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2017); David Noone, david-noone.com (25 January 2022); Cesc Guimerà, Rockdelux (23 October 2023); Ray Newman, Precast Reinforced Concrete Heart (29 August 2025).

Daffodil on the Pavement. 1st ed. London: Hutchinson, 1967. 2nd ed. [as Animals]. London: Pan, 1970. — Reviews and analyses: Stephen Wall, Observer (23 April 1967); David Rees, Spectator (28 April 1967); Robert Nye, Guardian (5 May 1967); Nicholas Tredell, Literary Encyclopedia (30 August 2013).

Speedy and Queen Kong. Nottingham: Pauper’s Press, 2004. — Analyses: Nicholas Tredell, Literary Encyclopedia (18 September 2013).

Works of and on Bill Hopkins

This list is by no means exhaustive. I shall be updating it shortly. Last updated 29 October 2025.

Novel

The Divine and the Decay: 1st ed. London: MacGibbon and Kee, 1957; 2nd ed. London: Deverell and Birdsey, 1984 [sometimes, but not always, under the new title The Leap!]; 3rd ed. Dunce, 2024 [as The Leap]. — Reviews: Tom Hopkinson, Observer (17 November 1957), p. 18; Howard Spring, Country Life, vol. 122, no. 3,175 (21 November 1957), pp. 1,117–9; Vernon Johnson, Guardian (26 November 1957), p. 4; G. S. Fraser, New Statesman, vol. 54, no. 1,394 (30 November 1957), p. 748; Simon Raven, Spectator, vol. 199, no. 6,754 (6 December 1957), p. 810; Hilary Corke, Listener, vol. 58, no. 1,498 (12 December 1957), p. 1,002; Millar MacLure, Tamarack Review, vol. 80, no. 7 (Spring 1958), pp. 92–6; British Book News, no. 210 (February 1958), p. 138; Graham Hough, Encounter, vol. 10, no. 2 (February 1958), pp. 84–7; Roy Fuller, London Magazine, vol. 5, no. 3 (March 1958), pp. 67–9; Robert Weaver, Queen’s Quarterly, vol. 65, no. 2 (Summer 1958), pp. 183–94; Colin Wilson, appendix to Beyond the Outsider (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965), pp. 207–18; Revilo P. Oliver, Liberty Bell, vol. 13, no. 4 (December 1985), pp. 17–19 [repr. in Counter-Currents (7 June 2011)]; Greg Johnson, Counter-Currents (31 January 2024) [repr. in Greg Johnson, Novel Takes: Essays on Literature (San Francisco, CA: Counter-Currents, 2024)]. — See also: Malcolm Bradbury and Dudley Andrew, ‘The Sugar Beet Generation: A Note in English Intellectual History,’ Texas Quarterly, vol. 3, no. 4 (Winter 1960), pp. 38–47.

Arnold Haskell on Bullfighting

Three articles on the corrida (Spanish bullfighting) by the ballet-critic Arnold Haskell: ‘The Corrida as Spectacle,’ New English Weekly, vol. 1, no. 24 (29 September 1932), pp. 565–6; ‘The Corrida and the Humanitarian, ibid., no. 25 (6 October 1932), pp. 590–1; and ‘The Literature of the Corrida,’ ibid., vol. 2, no. 7 (1 December 1932), pp. 155–6. The latter reviews Ernest Hemingway’s ‘Death in the Afternoon’ and Roy Campbell’s ‘Taurine Provence.’ I am reproducing them because they are interesting and not otherwise available online. If you own the copyright and want them taken down, let me know.

A. R. D. Fairburn, ‘On Work’ (1932)

A nice little article ‘On Work’ by A. R. D. Fairburn from the New English Weekly, vol. 2, no. 4 (10 November 1932), pp. 83–4. I reproduce it here as it is otherwise unavailable online. If you own the copyright and you would like it taken down, let me know.

The New English Weekly was founded by A. R. Orage in 1932. In many respects it was a continuation of what the New Age had been under Orage’s editorship with many familiar contributors (A. J. Penty, Ezra Pound, Anthony Ludovici) and themes (guild socialism, Nietzsche, the latest in literary modernism); though it was, for my money, more straightforwardly a ‘movement paper’ than the New Age had ever been, the movement in question being Social Credit.

‘Rex’ Fairburn was a poet New Zealand and a friend of Count Potocki de Montalk.

This article very satisfyingly skewers the poisonous doctrine doctrine of the dignity of honest toil. Though some of Fairburn’s references are out of date (‘Public School code,’ etc.), the evil he identifies is still alive and active.

Jonathan Bowden's Early Writing (1989–95)

This list is based on details gleaned from online catalogues (mainly Amazon’s Good Reads website, which seems even more comprehensive than Google Books) and from the catalogues of the six Legal Deposit Libraries of Ireland and the UK (the Bodleian in Oxford, the British Library in London, the Cambridge University Library, Trinity College Library in Dublin and the National Libraries of Scotland and Wales). I have also examined the six-volume Collected Works at the British Library and the Cambridge University Library.

Last updated 14 April 2026.

Jonathan Bowden on Jonathan Bowden

I just returned from the library, where I was inspecting vol. 3 of Jonathan Bowden’s very rare Collected Works, 6 vols. (London: Avant-Garde, 1995). I examined the first two volumes a couple of years ago. I will look at the remaining three as soon as time permits.

The Collected Works mark the transition, in my view, from the first to the second period in Bowden’s writing life. This was a transition of which Bowden was himself aware. Below are gathered a few snippets of ‘Bowden on Bowden’ from vol. 3. I hope this will be of all the more interest given how vanishingly rare and difficult to access texts from this period are, especially these Collected volumes.

Library Journal Reviews Tito Perdue's Lee (1991)

[This brief review of Tito Perdue’s Lee is reproduced for the benefit of enthusiasts and bibliomanes. By Janet Ingraham for Library Journal, 15 September 1991. I copied the text from Amazon and trusted the date from encyclopedia.com.]

Library Journal Reviews Tito Perdue's Opportunities in Alabama Agriculture (1994)

[This brief review of Tito Perdue’s Opportunities in Alabama Agriculture is reproduced for the benefit of enthusiasts and bibliomanes. By Robert Jordan for Library Journal, 1 November 1994. I copied the text from the Barnes and Noble website and trusted the date from encyclopedia.com.]

Library Journal Reviews Tito Perdue's Fields of Asphodel (2007)

[This brief review of Tito Perdue’s Fields of Asphodel is reproduced for the benefit of enthusiasts and bibliomanes. By Jim Dwyer for Library Journal, 15 June 2007. I copied the text from the Barnes and Noble website and trusted the date from encyclopedia.com.]

Library Journal Reviews Tito Perdue's New Austerities (1994)

[This brief review of Tito Perdue’s New Austerities is reproduced for the benefit of enthusiasts and bibliomanes. By Harold Augenbraum for Library Journal, 1 May 1994. I copied the text from the Barnes and Noble website and trusted the date from encyclopedia.com.]

Robert Nye on Tito Perdue's Lee (1991)

[Robert Nye gives Tito Perdue’s Lee a bad review. An interesting exercise in missing the point. Nye notices the absence of plot and spends a lot of ink on it. But this does not seem to have reminded him to attend to the book’s other riches. From ‘Read between the Lines and Find a Full Stop,’ The Guardian (7 November 1991), p. 28. Excerpted here for enthusiasts and the bibliographically curious.]

Anne Whitehouse Reviews Tito Perdue's Lee (1991)

[I trust the Times will not object to my reproducing this short review by Anne Whitehouse (New York Times, 24 November 1991) of Tito Perdue’s Lee for the benefit of fellow enthusiasts. Bibliography of works of and on Tito Perdue here.]

Works of and on Tito Perdue

Novels

Lee, 1. Four Walls Eight Windows, 1991; 2. Overlook Press, 2007; 3. Arktos, 2019. — Reviews: Kirkus Reviews (15 June 1991); Publishers Weekly (29 July 1991); Theresa Ducato, Booklist (August 1991); Janet Ingraham, Library Journal (15 September 1991); Robert Nye, The Guardian (7 November 1991); Ludovic Kennedy, Daily Telegraph (9 November 1991); Anne Whitehouse, New York Times (24 November 1991); Antoine Wilson, Los Angeles Times (15 July 2007); bourbonapocalypse.com (10 May 2011); Jef Costello, Counter-Currents (22 October 2013); Joakim Andersen, Motpol (21 September 2019).

The New Austerities, 1. Peachtree Press, 1994; 2. Standard American, 2023. — Reviews: Harold Augenbraum, Library Journal (1 May 1994); Publishers Weekly (1 August 1994); Katherine A. Powers, Boston Globe (11 December 1994); Dick Roraback, Los Angeles Times (15 January 1995); Thomas Fleming, Chronicles (December 1996).

Cioran on Aphorism and Aphorists

At the back of the monumental Oeuvres of E. M. Cioran (Gallimard, 1995) is a ‘Glossaire’ which gathers snippets from letters and interviews alphabetically by topic. Here follows a rough translation of some fragments on aphorism and aphorists.

Aphorisms (p. 1,736)

Aphorisms are instantaneous generalities.

I can only express results. My aphorisms aren’t really aphorisms. Each of them is the conclusion of a whole page, the end of a little bout of epilepsy.

I let everything else go and I give only the conclusion, like in a courtroom where, in the end, there’s only the verdict: condemned to death. Without thought’s unfolding: just its result. That’s my way of doing things, my formula.

Antoine de Rivarol, ‘Dialogue between a King and the Founder of a Religion’

Draft translation of an unpublished text published in André Le Breton, Rivarol: Sa vie, ses idées, son talent d’après des documents nouveaux (Paris: Hachette, 1895), pp. 258–9. A brief, ironic piece touching on the relation of sacred authority and secular power.

PDF here.

King: ‘How is it, impostor, that you come to my states to found a false religion?’

Apostle: ‘Sir, my religion is not false; nor could it be.’

‘What! Will you prove your religion to me?’

‘No, Sir, I will preach it.’

Remy de Gourmont, ‘Kissing’ (1910–15)

Nothing is as amusing to read as a diatribe against kissing in a stupidly scientific journal (for one of science’s properties is to increase human stupidity). Every paradox is unleashed. There are persons who will calmly inform you that kissing is an unhygienic practice. I am quite willing to believe it; but it does not bother me, nor, I suppose, almost anyone else. In truth, everything is unhygienic; everything is unclean, even life itself; but some things are agreeably unclean and others disagreeably unclean. To live according to the precepts of this imbecile science, one must avoid the first as much as the second. Truly, one would do better to cleave to the old common notion of cleanliness, which shades into the notion of decency, while, in all other things, indulging bravely in one’s instincts. That is what makes man civilized; and that is what he will always do as he mocks scientific pedagogues, who, in mentality, are very like of one of Molière’s medical men. Lovers kiss on the lips and a professor of hygiene pops up: ‘Poor things! What are you doing? Don’t you know that saliva contains some microbe or other, not to mention these others that are even more dangerous? Look but don’t touch, especially not with the lips. Science will protect you.’ I do not believe the day will come when lovers, frightened and obedient, will turn from this pleasure. ‘But men are so stupid and so frightened!’ Not to that extent, no. Lovers will always answer: ‘Our love is stronger than fear. Our desire is stronger than life.’ And thus, sensibility, which created civilization, will protect it from the tyranny of dogmatic scientism.

Remy de Gourmont, ‘Horses and Women’ (1921)

Apparently, the other day, a horse-dealer took his client for a ride and sold him a horse with a gutta-percha hoof. The horse-dealer is famous for his trickery. There is no horse-sickness he does not know how to disguise, no coat he cannot imitate, no gait he cannot force on a beast. Like woman, the horse is generally a counterfeit animal. We force him into the hypocrisy that woman forces herself into in order to trick man, her perpetual desire and perpetual enemy. So, somewhere or other, there is sure to be a saying of this sort: ‘Trust in neither horse nor woman.’ The horse no longer interests us much, having fallen out of fashion; but woman is always in fashion. The dexterity of horse-dealers notwithstanding, a horse is sold naked: there is a limit to his trickery; but to the trickery of woman, who sells herself clothed, there is no limit. An almost entirely artificial woman can inflame the covetousness of the connoisseur, not least because a woman made up by dressmakers and hairdressers, dentists and corset-makers almost always offers a fairer prospect than a natural woman. Artificiality goes deeper than the skin: wigs are not only for the head! How many lovers have caressed magnificent blonde tresses not long dead on the head of a hospitalized phthisic? How many lovers have been troubled by the finely-wrought rhythm of a breast they have seen before, but mute, then, in the rubber-merchant’s window? Her modesty, her ferocious modesty, compounds an artificial woman’s charm. Undressing, she defends herself despairingly. She is not one to let her gutta-percha slip like the poor, innocent horse!