Aiden O Reilly
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Stinging Fly Wheldon essay

“As was my habit at the time, my eye would alight on books that held promise of unlocking secrets of how the world works. Books described as ground-breaking or probing or uncompromising. At a book stall at Camden market the following blurb intrigued me:
When the letter came, inviting Alexander to attend an unspecified course of instruction, he somehow felt oddly compelled to attend. From that moment on, his world changed, all of his certainties and logic called into question.
The book was David Wheldon’s The Course of Instruction“

My essay in the Summer issue of The Stinging Fly on encountering David Wheldon’s early novels in my teenage years, and reading them again more than two decades later.

David Wheldon essay

Selected Posts

  • Backstory of a book
    2019-02-22
  • Stinging Fly Wheldon essay
    2017-07-24
  • The Blocks by Karl Parkinson
    2016-10-02
  • London Trip
    2016-09-05
  • Honest Ulsterman interview
    2016-02-29
  • Greetings, Hero launch Hodges Figgis
    2014-11-21

Selected pages

  • Debut Book
  • Publications
  • Writers' Workbench at Block T

Crucial

  • . .
  • Asylum books
  • Buy the book at Kennys
  • Daniel Seery
  • David Mohan
  • Djelloul Marbrook
  • Gorse magazine
  • Slava Nesterov Artist
  • The Penny Dreadful
  • The road to publication
  • The Short Review
  • The Short Review
  • Unthology

Other links

  • . .
  • Karl Parkinson's The Blocks
  • Unthology 4 review
  • Wandering minstrel Larry Beau

What I'm up to

  • Buy the book at Kennys
  • Examiner review
  • Irish Times / Ashley Stokes
  • Irish Times Q+A Irish Times Q+A
  • The road to publication

Recent posts

  • Hangdog Souls by Marc Joan
  • Writers’ Workbench, Block T Dublin 8
  • New writing course at Crumlin College
  • Human Wishes / Enemy Combatant Human Wishes / Enemy Combatant
  • The Guiltless Bystander – short story collection from the late David Wheldon
  • GIGANTIC by Ashley Stokes GIGANTIC by Ashley Stokes

Quotation

The Tygers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction