Sometimes a word comes to me that doesn’t yet have a meaning and seems to ask me to find it one; and this morning’s word was Glitfic. In this post I shall try to explore what Glitfic might mean.
Well, let’s start with litfic. Litfic is literary fiction and I’ve been doing a fair bit of that recently. I’ve branched out with my reading over the weekend or perhaps looped back a little to last year (was it last year? Yes it was – here’s my first post about it) when I first came across Patrick Melrose. This is a series of five novels amounting to nearly 900 pages though not remotely as dense or difficult as either The Mirror and the Light or Ducks, Newburyport. I have to say I was disappointed in the latter as it didn’t seem to come to any definite conclusion, though the penultimate scene was exciting enough. But the method of narrative was quite unique and together with the Neapolitan Quartet makes probably the finest depiction of female consciousness since Sappho.
I’m hoping to be able to read Sappho in the original before too long. My Greek is progressing well and I’m now able to read more or less anything – though reading and understanding are of course not the same thing. Anyway, back to Patrick Melrose, Edward St Aubyn’s account of a boy with an abusive father who grows up to be a rich, highly dysfunctional addict and eventually achieves some sort of redemption. It was made into a series starring Benedict Cumberbatch (who else could play a mile-a-minute addict so brilliantly?) but alas, that doesn’t seem to be streaming anywhere at the moment – or at least not anywhere I can access. I had a terrific day yesterday just sitting in the garden reading the books and losing myself in the appalling world of the idle rich in which the character grows up.
So I guess either of these things – Greek literature or the glitzy world of Melrose – could be glitfic. I think something should be…
Kirk out
Sarada Gray 