Accessibility Tools

  • Content scaling 100%
  • Font size 100%
  • Line height 100%
  • Letter spacing 100%

Someone Else: Fictional essays by John Hughes

by
September 2007, no. 294

Someone Else: Fictional essays by John Hughes

Giramondo, $24.95pb, 205pp

Someone Else: Fictional essays by John Hughes

by
September 2007, no. 294

In someone else, John Hughes gives new voice to twenty-one famous men – writers, artists and musicians – who have influenced his imagination and his outlook on life. In this non-standard homage, Huges has written a series of what he calls ‘fictional essays’. Each piece delves into aspects of an individual’s thought and creativity, but Hughes does this through the prism of his own world view, his imagination, his preoccupations. The title recalls Rimbaud’s declaration, ‘I am made up of all who have made me’. When Hughes writes about his fictional version of Marcel Proust or John Cage or Mark Rothko, he is simultaneously writing about himself.

While Hughes’s premise is intriguing, the results are mixed. Not unlike a musical album of B-sides and offcuts, there are plenty of gems, but also a few duds and fragments, and some fine ideas that never quite gel. In combination, the essays imply a world in which all knowledge and imaginative thought is somehow connected. In Calvino mode, Hughes writes:

Someone Else: Fictional essays

Someone Else: Fictional essays

by John Hughes

Giramondo, $24.95pb, 205pp

You May Also Like

Leave a comment

If you are an ABR subscriber, you will need to sign in to post a comment.

If you have forgotten your sign in details, or if you receive an error message when trying to submit your comment, please email your comment (and the name of the article to which it relates) to ABR Comments. We will review your comment and, subject to approval, we will post it under your name.

Please note that all comments must be approved by ABR and comply with our Terms & Conditions.