Rope

Language is the labyrinth we’re enmeshed in, and any line of exploration we think is leading us out only adds a further strand to the entanglement. Rope presents an alluring and provocative array of insights as it follows a mind on the move, ever curious and restlessly making connections. Nuggets of wisdom, snippets of anecdote and choice quotations are collected here, signposted by suggestive shoulder notes. Together they form a kind of contemporary commonplace book, accumulating with associative loops and echoes. Across three prose sections, Maurice Riordan knots together strands including scientific inquiry, colour theory and AI, philosophy, ethics and psychoanalysis. There are instructive revelations about the art of poetry, about all literature – whether the ‘folly of literary ambition’ or the ‘sinuous garland of plagiarism’ – gleaned from a lifetime of reading and writing. The middle section delves into the author’s personal history, evoking a childhood in rural Cork – ‘I was born into a horse-drawn candlelit world’ – and a ‘new self’ forged in fatherhood. Riordan is an intimate and jocular narrator throughout, calling upon everyone from Shakespeare to Schrödinger, Sappho to Siri in the shaping of these piquant and unforgettable discoveries.