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Is this a dirty word in Dorchester?

‘Is this a Dirty Word in Dorchester’ uses the template of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s story, ‘Babylon Revisited’. My story is about a relationship between a father and son in the aftermath of divorce and bridges two continents. The story is partly an exercise in rewriting, a response to perceiving a certain weakness in Fitzgerald’s use of the short story form. Since I had first read the story as a teenager and it had once meant so much to me, I re-conceived it and modernised its setting to the turn of the millennium. It therefore continues directly out of the experiment in modern adaptation started in The Ninth Wave. This return to and revision of the literary tradition is integral to any literary creative process. In this respect, my writing is embedded in cultural historical research, working in parallel with colleagues in the unit. It embodies the conviction that contemporary literature requires more literary historical freighting.