' The Swimmer ', Neddy returns home to find his family gone and house empty; ' Torch song ', Jack is left on the brink of death; ' Reunion ', an estranged father and son are left no closer towards reconciliation: Cheever does not write uplifting stories; he writes stories which are truthful. Life isn't easy; we go through hardships and don't always come out on top, this is a theme which prevails throughout Cheever's stories. He himself said: “I write to make sense of my life." With the numerous times that Cheever alludes to alcohol and relationships, we don't have to dig too deeply to begin to suspect of the author's inner turmoil with alcoholism and questions of sexuality. His work is a means of making sense of and wrestling with this inner strife. But this is not a phenomena present solely in the work of John Cheever, authors notoriously have "a sliver of ice in their hearts", as said by Graham Greene. Authors do...

In Roland Barthes' ' The Death of the Author ' he argued that the writer has no influence on the meaning of a text, that once it has been written it is for the readers to deduce meaning, what the author may have intended no longer matters. Should we agree with Barthes' theory, once the writer has written their work, they are obsolete. The social, political and historical context of the writing no longer matters. For Barthes the writer simply writes, and that is all. If we accept this view, then they become an invisible presence, like the elves and the shoemaker. A writer appears, writes, and then disappears. Perhaps this was easier to comprehend in a time when a writer's autonomy was possible. Now one cannot even share a flippant remark online without it being traced back to them. Thus, today and is it nearly impossible for a writer to be truly anonymous. Book signings and tours are almost as intrinsic to the occupation of a successful writer as the process of w...

"All fiction has to have a certain amount of truth in it to be powerful," said George R. R. Martin. But is powerful writing and good writing synonymous? I think so. Both resonate with a reader, they stay with and affect them. Good writing is powerful; powerful writing is good. But what is it that makes fiction powerful ? I would agree with Martin, it needs some ring of truth. Personal hardships resonate easily with a reader but so too does commentary on the modern world. I believe that what we write will inevitably have some political bias - whether intended it or not. It is our political and social ideas that colour how we view and experience the world, and fiction gives us a means of exploration that reality does not. I, therefore, believe that it is not only important but inescapable, for these social and political subjects to be present within writing. James Lovelock says, "science fiction is a vehicle for people to view the reality of the state of our planet...

Quite recently a friend of mine noted that Ori (one of the dwarves from Peter Jackson's The Hobbit)  is the "best representation of true British folk." It's a statement, I think, has a great deal of sense to it. But what is it that makes him so quintessentially British? He isn't one of the warrior dwarves (although in Jackson's interpretation we see that he  can  fight). He is awkward, bumbling, soft-spoken, and hardly memorable. But ultimately Ori proves himself courageous and determined. He is, quite literally, a little man who stands up against a dragon and wins. Moreover, I find it interesting to note that Ori is a writer, accompanying the other dwarves to the Lonely Mountain as their scribe. So what can this mean for British writers? If American writers are coarse and blunt and include allusions to the American dream and capitalism, it would seem apt that British writers are more softly spoken, melancholic and sarcastic in their work. Perhaps this...