[From Radio Saturday] – The review in question, which appeared at the usually dignified MercatorNet, is of my favorite series of children’s books — and, indeed, favorite books in general — The Westmark Trilogy, by the late, great Lloyd Alexander. The series, although a trilogy, is brief: All three of the books (Westmark, The Kestrel and The Beggar Queen) put together would be only a little longer than any given volume of The Lord of the Rings. However, in spite of their brevity, the books undertake a very ambitious task. They are, in essence, a complex, delicately-handled look at the effect of political turmoil in the lives of human beings. This topic is examined with Alexander’s characteristic turns-of-phrase, but also with sympathy and even-handedness: Continue reading “Scoring for Lloyd Alexander: Westmark 3, MercatorNet 0.” »
By SIMON HEFFER [The Telegraph] – When I was reading English at university 30 years ago, Trollope was simply not considered serious. This did not necessarily count against him. Cambridge in the late 1970s and early 1980s had some funny ideas about literature. To some writers it should have been a badge of honour to be denigrated, marginalised and reviled by the panjandrums of the English faculty. I recall the contempt in which Arnold Bennett, John Galsworthy and H G Wells were held – for no better reason, it seemed, than that they had not been Virginia Woolf or D H Lawrence.
Woolf’s neurotic snobbery and Lawrence’s overwritten exhibitions of his own perversions soon started to seem infinitely less appealing, and interesting, than the sharp observations, imagination and wit of their unfashionable contemporaries. I recall one preposterous Leftist lecturer telling us earnestly that one of the most important novelists of the Victorian age was not Trollope himself but his mother, Fanny. This was because Mrs Trollope had “written about working-class people in an unsentimentalised sort of way”. I am afraid I have yet to verify that.
Continue reading “Fanny Trollope, seriously.” »
[From Geist] – Welcome to the Geist Literal Literary Postcard Story Contest, the writing contest whose name is almost as long as the entries!
The 7th annual contest is now underway — and the deadline is January 15, 2011!
Continue reading “Contest: Short stories! Really short. With room for a stamp.” »
Saturday, January 1, 2011
By ROGER KIMBALL [Roger’s Rules] – It was only a few weeks ago that I got the news that my friend Denis Dutton, founder and editor of the renowned Arts & Letters Daily website, was gravely ill. I didn’t quite register how gravely until two or three emails to him went unanswered. Denis was always the most prompt of correspondents, often answering within minutes of one’s having pressed the “send” button. Then on December 28 I got the news: he had died, age 66.
Continue reading “Denis Dutton: mining the web for haikus.” »
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
By Michelene Wandor.
Now they can date.
I AM HOOKED ON Strictly Come Dancing. It’s not that I like ‘reality’ TV. I don’t put my life on hold in order to watch. I even dislike some aspects of it, to the point of regular yelling at the TV. More on that later.
I love the series because it is inherently dramatic and erotic, in the best possible taste, as Kenny Everett might have said. Structurally, it is (like all other celebrity reality TV shows) carefully, and dramatically prepared and structured. The three-month series, which concluded ten days ago, runs from September to December.
The selected cast broadly represents different ages, sizes, degrees of celebrity and dancing potential. Some celebrities are already much in the public eye (Ann Widdecombe, Scott Maslam), and some perhaps springboarding faded or former showbiz careers (Paul Daniels, Pamela Stephenson). Continue reading “Strictly watching Strictly Come Dancing.” »
Sunday, December 26, 2010
By Anthony Howell.
RAIN COMES STEADILY DOWN over the intersection, the green lights’ reflection on the tarmac smearing yellow lines. Umbrellas are out, and people are making the rain an excuse for sheltering under the awning of the Big Nectar, scooping up tubs of black, frozen, iron-laden acai. Men bare to the waist are walking home in their Bermudas. Rain blowing off the roofs and the edges of the overhangs, and dripping down the central runnels of large green leaves.
There are mountains and islands everywhere: great tongues of jungle reach into the heart of the city, and so do great tongues of sea.
Brazil is committed to cleaning up the favelas before they host the World Cup, so the tourists sit on the beach, sipping green coconut juice and getting swept up by the waves, in a town where certain pockets are more or less war zones.
Continue reading “December paragraphs from Rio.” »
Friday, December 24, 2010
By WILLIAM ZINSSER [American Scholar] – Turning the page, I found another block of typing:
Alone of all American holidays, Christmas has been held inviolate, and will be observed throughout the Army by order of the War Department. By this wise exception men may have a brief respite from the grim business of war to restock their spiritual strength and reexamine their position in terms of the religion of their nation. This they may do with an untroubled conscience. They will reflect that the tenets preached by Him whose birthday is holy throughout the western world are sound, worth dying for, the very marrow of our culture. That some of these professed tenets may not be practiced for awhile is due to human failings and makes them not less true. They have been appraised in the perspective of time, they have survived many wars, and will survive this one.
Continue reading “Christmas inviolate, and observed throughout the Army by order of the War Department.” »
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
By TOM ROWE [Le Monde Diplomatique] – Keeping up with events in Ireland is now a full time job. One afternoon towards the end of November, there were multiple happenings. The government was rapidly imploding, with Green Party coalition partners and independent supporters calling for an election. Protesters, including a Sinn Fein member of parliament, fought police, almost breaching the security of the Dáil (parliament). The shape of IMF/ECB/European Commission rescue became visible; it would be a lifeline to save Ireland from sinking financially into the mess the country had created, dragging the euro down with it. Later that day, the Taoiseach (prime minister) Brian Cowen, flanked by his stony-faced cabinet, said he would continue to govern at least until the EU/IMF-endorsed austerity budget is passed on 7 December.
Continue reading “The miracle of Brian Cowen’s unpopularity.” »
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
By PETER STOTHARD [The Times] – Just as a butcher should have the best of Christmas turkeys, and the fireman’s house deserves especially dutiful attention in a fire, the Obituaries Editor of a newspaper has to be sent off in style.
Exactly thus, and very stylishly indeed, came the story of Tony Howard’s life in The Times today (available to on-line subscribers and surely worth the charge in itself), a piece which the great man would have approved, honest, accurate, elegantly balanced between the goods and bads, ups and downs, failures and successes of our trade.
Continue reading “An obol for the obituary man.” »
Monday, December 20, 2010
By PAUL JOHNSON [Standpoint] – The young, especially, do not know enough about GKC. Among their elders, there is a lot of prejudice against him, especially those who have something to do with education. He is kept off official reading lists, curricula and degree courses. Although, in his last years, he showed himself a fine broadcaster, the BBC establishment has always hated him. His Father Brown stories have never been serialised on TV, though they are a natural.
Continue reading “Dear Chesterton, why do we despise thee?” »
Saturday, December 18, 2010
By Austin de Lone
Still bashing.
NICK LOWE, BASSIST/SINGER/SONGWRITER with Brinsley Schwarz; solo artist and house producer for legendary Stiff Records, producer of Elvis Costello’s first five albums; member of Rockpile with Dave Edmunds, and Little Village with Ry Cooder; writer of “Peace Love and Understanding”, “Half a Boy and Half a Man”, “Cruel To Be Kind”, “The Beast In Me”, and so many more, stepped up to the microphone last October at The Great American Music Hall in San Francisco. It was in the middle of the 4th Annual Benefit Concert for The Richard de Lone Special Housing Project. He wanted to introduce “Oliver’s Army”, one of the Elvis Costello songs that he was performing in an evening entitled “Costello Sings Lowe, Nick Sings Elvis – A Rare Bashing of Each Other’s Songs.” He spoke to the sold-out crowd with his usual self-effacing wit and good humor.
Continue reading “Nick Lowe: the true-blue Basher shows up for a friend.” »
Friday, December 17, 2010
By MAX HASTINGS [Daily Mail] – I heard one of the cleverest men in Britain, master of an Oxbridge college, quite calmly say the other night: ‘The best hope for the monarchy is that Prince Charles dies before the Queen.’
Friday, December 17, 2010
by DAVID EDMONDS [Prospect Magazine] – Governments always have to prioritise—choosing, for example, between a cheap medicine which benefits few people a little, and an expensive one which benefits many people a lot. But in hard financial times, such predicaments become more acute.
Moral philosophers have long debated under what circumstances it is acceptable to kill and why, for example, we object to killing a patient for their organs, but not to a distribution of resources that funds some drugs rather than others. To understand the debate you need to understand the trolley problem. It was conceived decades ago by two grande dames of philosophy: Philippa Foot of Oxford University and Judith Jarvis Thomson of MIT. The core problem involves two thought experiments—call the first “Spur” and the second “Fat Man.”
Continue reading “Who dies? The fat man? Or the man on the spur?” »
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
By JEFFREY GREGGS [New Criterion] – I was fourteen years old when I first encountered the composite heads of the Milanese mannerist Giuseppe Arcimboldo at the Kunsthistoriches Museum in Vienna. After passing what seemed like an eternity in galleries populated by religious scenes and unfamiliar margraves, coming across Arcimboldo’s anthropomorphic amalgamations of objects, vegetables, and animals was a welcome delight. “Weird!” and “cool!” was my verdict then, and it stayed that way—precisely that way—for many years: a witty, queer, and talented crowd pleaser, I thought, and that’s about it.
Continue reading “Arcimboldo: three centuries of ‘weird!’ and ‘cool!’” »
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
By R.C. BAKER [Village Voice] – By 1955, Congressional pressure had driven horror comics out of business, but in less than a decade Creepy and Eerie magazines resurrected the genre like some reanimated corpse seeking revenge on its own murderer. Darkhorse’s striking reprints (currently at 13 hardcover volumes, $49.95 each) reveal such industry giants as Gene Colan, Russ Heath, Jerry Grandenetti, and Alex Toth using ink wash, crosshatching, and swathes of Zip-a-tone to lend their murderers and monsters convincing presence. These always entertaining, occasionally brilliant stories—see Steve Ditko’s kaleidoscopic time shifts in “Collector’s Edition” (Creepy Vol. 2)—gain force from the lithe black-and-white layouts.
Continue reading “Nobody laughs at a horror comic.” »
