Lee Rourke
Encyclopedia
Lee Rourke is a writer and editor. He is the author of the short story collection Everyday and the novel The Canal (winner of The Guardian's 'Not The Booker Prize' 2010) published by Melville House Publishing
. He has also written for The Guardian
, The Independent
, TLS, The Observer
, and the New Statesman
as well as book blogs such as Ready, Steady, Book. He is Contributing Editor for 3:AM Magazine
and also blogs at SPONGE! He lives in London.
“What truly interests me is why Everyday was created in the first place: I guess I wanted to recreate, or copy, the base materiality around me: the same faces walking to work each day, the same arguments in the road, cyclists falling off their ‘fixers’ and ‘Bromptons’, the same conversations, the same daydreams, the same photocopying machines… A copy of the things of the everyday. I’m interested in Blanchot’s idea that we are all riveted to existence.” 3:AM Magazine
, UK (2011).
Best European Fiction, Edited by Alexander Hemon, Dalkey Archive Press
, US (2011).
Writing at the Edge, Edited by Zsolt Alapi, Siren Song Press, Canada (2007).
3:AM London, New York, Paris, Edited by Andrew Stevens, Social Disease Books, London, (2008).
The Bookaholics’ Guide to Blogs, Compiled by Rebecca Gillieron & Catheryn Kilgarriff, Marion Boyars Publishers, London/New York, (2007).
Love Hotel City, Edited by Andrew Stevens, Future Fiction London, London, (2009).
The Beat Anthology, Edited by Sean McGahey, Blackheath Books, (2010).
.
'A poem should not mean,/ But be,' or so the twentieth century literati would have had us believe. Yet from the earliest of classical narratives to modern-day e-zines, literary works have been turned to political, didactic and symbolic ends. In this groundbreaking work, Lee Rourke traces the long history of a form currently enjoying a resurgence online and in the works of some of the most talented young authors in print. As we begin to emerge from modernism and its aftermath, fables – the briefest of narratives given the most expansive of significations – have gained in popularity. Author and literary critic Rourke here considers the permutations of the form, from Aesop's tortoise and hare, via Plato's socio-political works and the later ribald medieval tales, to Kafka's anthropomorphism and present-day authors including Blake Butler, Joseph Young, Shane Jones and Jonathan Lethem. A Brief History of Fables offers a bold take on the new face of literature.
readysteadybook.com
Articles/Reviews at The Guardian
The Guardian
Reviews for The Independent
Dazed and Arouzed by Gavin James Bower
The River
Wildlife by Joe Stretch
The Bird Room by Chris Killen
Reviews for Bookforum
Bookforum
Reviews for The Quarterly Conversation
The Power of Flies by Lydie Salvayre
“Boredom has always fascinated me. I suppose it is the Heideggerian sense of 'profound boredom' that intrigues me the most. What he called a 'muffling fog' that swathes everything – including boredom itself – in apathy. Revealing 'being as a whole': that moment when we realise everything is truly meaningless, when everything is pared down and all we are confronted with is a prolonged, agonising nothingness. Obviously, we cannot handle this conclusion; it suspends us in constant dread. In my fictions I am concerned with two archetypes only, both of them suspended in this same dread: those who embrace boredom and those who try to fight it. The quotidian tension, the violence that this suspension and friction creates naturally filters itself into my work.” The Guardian
Melville House Publishing
Melville House Publishing is an independent publisher of literary fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. The company was founded in 2001 by the husband and wife team of Dennis Loy Johnson and Valerie Merians in Hoboken, New Jersey, a location Johnson jokingly called "the Left Bank" of New York City...
. He has also written for The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
, The Independent
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
, TLS, The Observer
The Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
, and the New Statesman
The New Statesman
The New Statesman is an award-winning British sitcom of the late 1980s and early 1990s satirising the Conservative government of the time...
as well as book blogs such as Ready, Steady, Book. He is Contributing Editor for 3:AM Magazine
3:AM Magazine
3:AM Magazine is a literary magazine, which was set up as 3ammagazine.com in April 2000 and is edited from Paris. Its editor-in-chief since inception has been Andrew Gallix, a lecturer at the Sorbonne ....
and also blogs at SPONGE! He lives in London.
Novels
The Canal (winner of The Guardian's 'Not The Booker Prize 2010') follows an unnamed narrator as he tries to make sense of the everyday violence around him. One morning, instead of walking to work (his usual weekday routine), he simply walks to the Regent’s canal in north east London, where he finds himself a suitable bench to sit on opposite a whitewashed office block on the other side of the murky water. He spends most of this first morning watching the commuters walking and cycling to and fro, together with the swans, coots and moorhens who have made the canal their home. He blames the onset of boredom for this sudden change in lifestyle. He is soon joined by a young woman on the same bench. She doesn’t speak, just stares ahead at the whitewashed office block, watching its occupants move from office to office and desk to desk. In this coming together begins a complicated treatise on violence, catastrophe, secrets, death, aviation, weight, technology and gravity, as this mysterious woman leads the narrator into a dark world of obsession and brutality.Short stories
Everyday is a set of short stories based in the heart of London. Rourke writes:“What truly interests me is why Everyday was created in the first place: I guess I wanted to recreate, or copy, the base materiality around me: the same faces walking to work each day, the same arguments in the road, cyclists falling off their ‘fixers’ and ‘Bromptons’, the same conversations, the same daydreams, the same photocopying machines… A copy of the things of the everyday. I’m interested in Blanchot’s idea that we are all riveted to existence.” 3:AM Magazine
Anthologies
Best British Short Stories 2011, Edited by Nicholas Royle, Salt PublishingSalt Publishing
Salt Publishing is an independent publisher whose origins date back to 1990 when poet John Kinsella launched Salt Magazine in Western Australia. The journal rapidly developed an international reputation as a leading publisher of new poetry and poetics...
, UK (2011).
Best European Fiction, Edited by Alexander Hemon, Dalkey Archive Press
Dalkey Archive Press
Dalkey Archive Press is a publisher of fiction, poetry, and literary criticism in Illinois in the United States, specializing in the publication or republication of lesser known, often avant-garde works...
, US (2011).
Writing at the Edge, Edited by Zsolt Alapi, Siren Song Press, Canada (2007).
3:AM London, New York, Paris, Edited by Andrew Stevens, Social Disease Books, London, (2008).
The Bookaholics’ Guide to Blogs, Compiled by Rebecca Gillieron & Catheryn Kilgarriff, Marion Boyars Publishers, London/New York, (2007).
Love Hotel City, Edited by Andrew Stevens, Future Fiction London, London, (2009).
The Beat Anthology, Edited by Sean McGahey, Blackheath Books, (2010).
Non-Fiction
A Brief History of Fables: From Aesop to Flash Fiction is published by Hesperus PressHesperus Press
Hesperus Press is an independent publisher based in London, UK. It was founded in 2001 by Alessandro Gallenzi and Elisabetta Minervini, who went on to found Alma Books in 2005....
.
'A poem should not mean,/ But be,' or so the twentieth century literati would have had us believe. Yet from the earliest of classical narratives to modern-day e-zines, literary works have been turned to political, didactic and symbolic ends. In this groundbreaking work, Lee Rourke traces the long history of a form currently enjoying a resurgence online and in the works of some of the most talented young authors in print. As we begin to emerge from modernism and its aftermath, fables – the briefest of narratives given the most expansive of significations – have gained in popularity. Author and literary critic Rourke here considers the permutations of the form, from Aesop's tortoise and hare, via Plato's socio-political works and the later ribald medieval tales, to Kafka's anthropomorphism and present-day authors including Blake Butler, Joseph Young, Shane Jones and Jonathan Lethem. A Brief History of Fables offers a bold take on the new face of literature.
Criticism
Reviews for Ready, Steady, Bookreadysteadybook.com
Articles/Reviews at The Guardian
The Guardian
Reviews for The Independent
Dazed and Arouzed by Gavin James Bower
The River
Wildlife by Joe Stretch
The Bird Room by Chris Killen
Reviews for Bookforum
Bookforum
Reviews for The Quarterly Conversation
The Power of Flies by Lydie Salvayre
Boredom
Rourke’s fiction deals primarily with boredom. Rourke explains further in The Guardian:“Boredom has always fascinated me. I suppose it is the Heideggerian sense of 'profound boredom' that intrigues me the most. What he called a 'muffling fog' that swathes everything – including boredom itself – in apathy. Revealing 'being as a whole': that moment when we realise everything is truly meaningless, when everything is pared down and all we are confronted with is a prolonged, agonising nothingness. Obviously, we cannot handle this conclusion; it suspends us in constant dread. In my fictions I am concerned with two archetypes only, both of them suspended in this same dread: those who embrace boredom and those who try to fight it. The quotidian tension, the violence that this suspension and friction creates naturally filters itself into my work.” The Guardian
External links
- Lee Rourke Homepage
- Lee Rourke reads from The Canal on the InDigestInDigestInDigest is a literary journal founded in 2007 by editors and David Doody. It is an online quarterly literary magazine, as well as a reading series, podcast, and publishing house located in New York City and Minneapolis, MN.-The Magazine:...
podcast - Interview with Lee Rourke at Bookslut
- Podcast interview with Lee Rourke at Marketplace of IdeasMarketplace of ideasThe "marketplace of ideas" is a rationale for freedom of expression based on an analogy to the economic concept of a free market. The "marketplace of ideas" belief holds that the truth or the best policy arises out of the competition of widely various ideas in free, transparent public discourse, an...