Another mobile post, so I’ll be brief. I’m currently reading Seth Price’s novel Duck Seth Price (ah the magic of auto-correct!), while at the same time writing a paper for the upcoming 5th International Conference on the Ancient Novel in Houston next week. I am meant to be delivering a paper on Apuleius’ Metamorphoses in Contemporary Art, but reading Price’s novel has forced me to change my mind. I don’t want to spoil it for any of you reading this who happen to turn up at my talk in Houston, but my paper will instead focus on the phenomenon of the contemporary artist’s novel as descended from some specific strategies employed – in different ways – by the ancient Roman fiction-writers Petronius and Apuleius. So, it will be more about satire and dogmatism as (divergent?) approaches to the art of storytelling than about the reception of ancient fiction in contemporary art. Sorry if you’re disappointed and to acknowledge the discarded idea, here’s a nice and relevant image from Price’s earlier work Poems taken from my office computer:
