Category Archives: Essay

‘Let a hard and just sentence be given and carried out, as the honour of the nation demands and its greatest traitor deserves.’ Resolution of Czechoslovak resistance organisation, demanding severe punishment for Father Jozef Tiso, November 1946 ‘We bear within us a reticent executioner, an unrealised criminal. And those who lack the boldness to acknowledgeContinue reading “Life and Death Sentences”

Richey Edwards and Nicky Wire first learned about artist Jenny Saville by way of a feature article in a weekend newspaper supplement. Wire told writer Dan Richards in 2010: “I remember the day vividly because we both bought the Independent on Sunday and in the magazine was a special on Jenny Saville – the firstContinue reading “Interfacing”

‘Jung hardly went far enough when he said “Hitler is the unconscious of every German”; he comes uncomfortably near being the unconscious in most of us… The shock of discovering through Freud and Marx that when we thought we were being perfectly responsible, logical, and loving we were nothing of the kind, has led usContinue reading “Walking Sideways”

‘I use “America” throughout the text to refer to the United States. I choose to use the word America for its resonances as marker of a generic nation and mass-mediated political and cultural condition/terrain.’ – S Paige Baty ‘Away shallow USA’ The unusual, compressed typography of the track title ‘Ifwhiteamericatoldthetruthforonedayit’sworldwouldfallapart’ might possibly be traced backContinue reading “National Anathema”

‘By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote.’ – Ralph Waldo Emerson ‘[A]ny text is constructed as a mosaic of quotations; any text is the absorption and transformation of another.’ – Julia Kristeva ‘I don’t think people believe I read books.’ – Richey Edwards During his final tour with Manic Street Preachers, RicheyContinue reading “Anatomies of Influence”

This is the second part of an essay on the song ‘Faster’. The first part can be read here. ‘Faster’ may well have sent James Dean Bradfield in the direction of the Sex Pistols because of those traces of ‘Anarchy in the UK’. The words written by Richey Edwards and Nicky Wire contain an extraordinaryContinue reading “Faster (Further Downwards)”

‘The primary imagination I hold to be the living power and prime agent of all human perception, and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM.’ – Samuel Taylor Coleridge ‘Is this the IRA?’ Following a performance by Manic Street Preachers on Top of theContinue reading “Faster (Precursor)”

‘Of course, there are some people who sell themselves for money. That “some” constitutes 90 percent of the people I’ve known in my life, including myself. We all sell out some part of us.’ – Lenny Bruce Before the music begins, a man’s voice is heard. A pimp summarising what’s on offer in the sexualContinue reading “In the beginning was the word, and the word was ‘yes’”