Brian Dillon

Life
1969- ; essayist and critic; b. Dublin; ed. UCD (English & Philosophy); commenced PhD time in  20th-c. literary criticism and theory at TCD, and concluded it in (Kent, 1995-99); lect. in English, Kent, to 2004; appt. London editor of Cabinet; contrib. to Frieze and Artforum; issued In the Dark Room: A Journey in Memory (2005), a reflective autobiography of the early death of parents and his own hypochondria written in a Sebaldian manner; winner of the Irish Book Award for non-fiction; receives AHRC Fellowship in the Creative and Performing Arts and embarked on “Ruins of the Twentieth Century” project, 2008 to 2011 issued Sanctuary (2011), a novella centred on a young woman who returns to the ruins of a Catholic seminary in search of her missing lover; issued Culture and Curiosity (1012), a collection of essays; reviews books for The Irish Times.

His AHRC project at Kent University ‘Ruins of the Twentieth Century’ (2008-11) resulted in the novella Sanctuary (Sternberg Press 2011) and Ruins (MIT Press/Whitechapel Gallery, 2011), an edited anthology, to be followed by  Blown All to Nothing (2013).

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Dillon on Barth
Listen to Brian Dillon on Roland Barthes - “Arts Tonight” (23.04.2011) an interview associated with his essay in The Dublin Review

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Works
Autobiography
  • In the Dark Room: A Journey in Memory (London: Penguin 2005, 2006), 246pp.
  • Sanctuary (Sanctuary (Sternberg Press, 2011) [novella]; - and a third, Blown All to Nothing, will be published by Penguin in 2013.
Biography
  • Tormented Hope: Nine Hypochondriac Lives (Dublin: Penguin Ireland 2009), 277pp.; Do. [update edn.] (2010), [7], 290pp. [chaps. on James Boswell, Charlotte Brontë, Charles Darwin, Florence Nightingale, Alice James, Daniel Paul Schreber, Marcel Proust, Glenn Gould, Andy Warhol [on cover]; Michael Jackson (afterword)]
Essays
  • Culture and Curiosity (Sternberg Press 2012) [essays].
Miscellaneous
  • ed., “Culture and Melancholy”, in Journal of European Studies [Special Issue] (London: Sage Pubs. 2003), [199]-374pp. [conference hosted by School of English & Kent Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities at University of Kent, Oct. 2002].
  • ed. Ruins (MIT Press/Whitechapel Gallery 2011) [anthology].
Reviews
  • Brian Dillon, ‘A Master of the Metaphor’, review of The Meaning of Life by Terry Eagleton, in The Irish Times (24 March 2007) [see under Eagleton - infra].
  • An awfully big authorial adventure’, review of The Enchanter: Nabokov and Happiness, by Lila Azam Zanganeh, in The Irish Times (9 July 2011), Weekend, p.10.
  • ‘Lust, betrayal and bottled genies’, review of Stranger Magic: Charmed States & the Arabian Nights, by Marina Warner, in The Irish Times (9 July 2011), Weekend, p.13.
  • [... &c.]

[ Brian Dillon has Wordpress blog and a Royal College of Arts staff page - online; accessed 29.07.2014. ]

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Criticism
Michael Kerrigan, review of In the Dark Room, in Times Literary Supplement (27 Jan. 2006), p.22; Aengus Woods, review of Sanctuary, in The Irish Times (18 June 2011), Weekend, p.13.

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