“The Old Testament Scriptures end with a terrible word. This word no polite language of modern times can ever soften . . . .” T. F. Powys’s power over me is something remarkable. He often writes about pariahs of one sort of another; I feel that if wasn’t one already, I become one, and a complaisant one at that, when I read him. He wrote many fine stories and lived in a world of his own. One anecdote has it that, when he was eventually persuaded to take a ride in a motor vehicle, for all the wonder and speed of the experience, he merely commented, with the fluttering visions revealed by the vehicle’s headlamps, that travel by such means must have been hell for lepidopterists. (Also recommended: the novels Mr Weston’s Wine and Unclay, as well as Powys’s various story collections.) ‘Mock’s Curse’ is the story of two brothers, John and James, and how they fall out.
From Mock’s Curse: Nineteen stories, edited by Elaine and Barrie Mencher, Brynmill Press, 1995)