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Pygiana ac Obsesiynau Eraill

In his substantial body of postmodernist fiction Morgan experiments with fictionality, playfulness, and the subversion of expectation. The same techniques are found in his non-fiction and essays in which he explores a multiplicity of cultural subjects that are of personal interest to him and which also reveal an underlying (and self-confessed) delight in ecphrasis; a technique that has characterized his writing since the 1980s. Pygiana ac Obsesiynau Eraill is not an academic volume of cultural and artistic criticism. Rather, it is a knowing experiment with the essay form (‘ysgrif’) of the Welsh modernist tradition that is inextricably bound with T.H.Parry-Williams and defined by generic conventions laid down by Parry-Williams. Morgan explores the subjective, creative possibilities of this typically objective, logical literary form, and ventures beyond his comfort zone as a creative writer (ostensibly concerned with language), in order to engage with other creative media and forms. The postmodern sensibility that Morgan infuses into this thoroughly modern form is clear from the eclectic range of subjects that the collection contains – pugs, Siamese cats, the inscriptions of David Jones, and the artist Ruth Jên Evans - and also from the overall collage effect of the writer’s musings.