Recent Entries in Literature
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Man walks into a column, no.2: Who?
I am being followed by a Nobel Prize winning author. I'm conscious that it might seem a bit indulgent to post twice about the same book within the space of a week, on two different blogs, but these are special circumstances. The first was a short note of my entirely subjective, personal response to a novel called The Black Book, by the laureate-follower in question: Orhan Pamuk. As you can see for yourself if you read...
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What's the point of reading novels?
Why are men, on the whole, much less likely to read fiction than non-fiction? This is something I've been pondering recently, after a quick non-scientific poll of friends and colleagues confirmed what a bit of web-grazing also shows: men account for only around a fifth or a quarter (depending on who you believe) of fiction readers (see for example here, here or here). Actually, that's a bit disingenuous: what I've really been wondering is why...
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Franzen on Franzen
I was at Kings Place (why no apostrophe?) recently to see Jonathan Franzen talk about his novel The Corrections - the one published in 2001, which made his name, and which caused his new novel Freedom to be so eagerly anticipated. In spite of what his reputation for monk-like devotion to intellectual purity of craft might suggest (see here), Franzen was warm, witty and just as articulate and clever as his writing. If you haven't...
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The lengths writers go to avoid distraction
For some reason I enjoy reading about how writers write - their desks, their superstitions, their routines - even more than I enjoy shopping for books, which in turn I enjoy even more than actually reading. Without really thinking about it, I paraded my 'niche interest' for all to see (all seven readers of this blog, that is - my Mum's recently swelled the ranks, or at least says she has) when I made my...
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The Vyas Sisters' reading meme
Following my answers to the reading meme, here are the answers from 2 of the 3 Vyas sisters. Dhara V: Or put it in another room or back of the wardrobe if it scares or upsets me. Jigna V: I do start mumbling and grumbling aloud and if it gets really annoying I have to put the book down and walk away, or pick up another book....
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Quotation of the week
I have never, ever, thought it right that we pay tax on Mozart, but not on Jeffrey Archer. — The Bookseller Crow, on the issue of VAT (not) on books. I happen to agree....
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Man walks into a blog...
I'm really excited to be posting this and thereby accepting Rich's generous invitation to contribute to arbitrary constant. He won't remember this but he made a similar suggestion several years ago, when we were bound together in the merry dance of the client-contractor 'relationship' (yes, for many months I was officially Rich's Bitch, and no, I’m not really sure that you can be 'bound together' in a dance). As a web naïf to Rich's continent-crossing...
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Nudge by Thaler and Sunstein
Proving how I am always ahead of the zeitgeist, anticipating trends before they happen, and living up to my reputation of informing the politics of the future, I have just read Nudge. I thoroughly enjoyed the first two sections, detailing how they do the sociological and psychological research which informs much of behavioural economics. As ever, though, the descriptive parts of a book like this don't translate well into the analytical parts, and Thaler and...
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Norm's choice (updated)
Norman Geras would like to hear from you: You are going to some distant and lonely and low-tech place where you will have to spend the rest of your days, and you can: - (a) either take 100 books you have already read and which you may then re-read without limit, those being the only books you will ever get to see; - (b) or not take any of the books you have already read,...
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Camus in the Pantheon
This strikes me as a bit churlish: French intellectuals have heaped scorn on a proposal by Nicolas Sarkozy to bestow the country's greatest posthumous honour upon the writer Albert Camus, accusing the rightwing president of trying to cash in on the thinker's popularity with little respect for his politics or personality. Sarkozy is proposing to transfer Camus's remains to the Pantheon, the resting place for heroes of France, on the 50th anniversary of his death...
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Quotation of the week
When a man has great studies[,] he must of course give up seeing much of the world. — George Eliot (in Middlemarch)...
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When biography doesn't end with obituary
One biographical subject whose posthumous life has been spectacularly potent is Jane Austen, whose modest tally of six novels and 41 years has managed to spawn a hydra-headed global industry. Claire Harman, in her deft, elegant exploration of the cult of all things Austen, starts at the beginning, in Steventon parsonage. She reveals that, far from being a solitary secret scribbler, Jane was merely one of several Austens hungry for literary fame. James, her elder...
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On writing
Some writers on whether they find writing a joy or a chore. Here's Will Self: I gain nothing but pleasure from writing fiction; short stories are foreplay, novellas are heavy petting – but novels are the full monte... I even enjoy the mechanics of writing, the dull timpani of the typewriter keys, the making of notes – many notes – and most seductive of all: the buying of stationery....
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1,000 novels to read before you die
A very comprehensive site covering a wide-ranging discussion on literature and the books to read before you die. Here. It's a difficult thing, telling people what novels they should read, especially before they die. But it's a pretty good list, and a very good site, so you might as well give it a whirl....
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The fading world of books
A (presumably non-ironic) interactive guide to the fading world of books on the Charing Cross Road, one of my favourite haunts in London....
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Self on Sebald
Will Self on his growing affinity with one of my favourite authors, W.G. Sebald: Reading WG Sebald I felt a growing affinity, although not with the man himself - I never met, let alone knew him - nor with humanity in general. Indeed, immersed in Sebald, the inversion of Schopenhauer's dictum "The more I love mankind, the less I love men" often occurs to me: the more his fictional alter ego reverences individual men and...
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"Most grossly false, most monstrous, and most cruel"
That's Charles Dickens, on the rumours that he'd had an affair with his sister-in-law. Did he, in fact, father an illegitimate child through such an affair? There could be evidence to suggest he did. Wisely, the Dickens Museum is holding back its thoughts on the matter until it can assess the evidence......
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The Triumph of the Political Class by Peter Oborne
I was hoping that Peter Oborne's The Triumph of the Political Class was going to be an assessment of the professionalisation of politics. I was expecting an analysis of the previous professions of politicians (e.g. teachers, doctors, trade unionists etc.) and a detailed consideration of how the people around politicians — in the media, the think tanks, their advisers — move across the various and increasingly blurred boundaries between them. Although some of these themes...
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A brief survey of the short story
The Guardian has been running an excellent survey of the short story. Part 13 is on Franz Kafka, and is available here. The full series is here. Below are my favourite parts of the survey so far, which reflects some of my favourite authors in any form of writing: — Raymond Carver — Anton Chekhov — Ryunosuke Akutagawa — VS Pritchett...
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George W. Bush: the well-read president?
I've heard this before: George W. Bush is well read. Come 20 January, he'll have much more time for reading....
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Second-hand books: bad for author's self-esteem?
Like the Obama presidency, the economic downturn apparently reaches into every facet of human life. That is, at least, for all journalists looking for a hook on which to hang any item they are looking to write. Nevertheless, I think this one might have a point: I conclude that this [2009 being worse than 2008] can only be good news for secondhand book dealers. So my prediction for 2009 is that the devoted book reader...
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"I prefer reading"
From the Guardian: Anybody who worries that they're not learning anything useful from novels can stop the hand-wringing and keep reading: a new report provides a possible salve for the guilty reader's social conscience. A team from Manchester University and the London School of Economics claim that stories and their writers can do just as much as academics and policy researchers, perhaps even more, to explain and communicate the world's problems. Fiction, they boldly venture,...
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On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan
Note: spoilers follow. McEwan's celebrated novella, the majority of On Chesil Beach centres on the wedding night of two 22-year-old virgins as they attempt to consummate the marriage. Focusing so intently on the marriage night, and three set pieces in particular (a meal, the intimacy, and an exchange on Chesil Beach), McEwan once again opens himself to the charge that he writes well only when he focuses on incidents (I've discussed this charge in a...
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Reading class?
Book groups have voted The Kite Runner the best book for the third year in a row. If I was in a book group, I wouldn't have voted for that particular book, and the reasons why are outlined in my review....
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Random House not keen on free speech
Do you think 'twat' is offensive? Technically it is, referring to, well, you know what it refers to. But, as with most swear words, its current usage is not really related to its original use. In response to parents who think it is offensive and so shouldn't be in a children's book, Random House are going to change the appearance of 'twat' in a Jacqueline Wilson book to 'twit'. I would have thought the author...
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Book criticism and the internet
Another good article in this month's Prospect is by that magazine's deputy editor, William Skidelsky. In Critical condition, Skidelsky considers book criticism, and especially book criticism in light of the internet. Plotting his way through the arguments from bloggers and critics alike — both groups blaming the other for what they perceive to be what's "wrong" with book reviewing as it currently stands — Skidelsky's conclusion is a sensible and measured one: In the end,...
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Riotous observations — 1
After my post yesterday on my favourite 10 English-language authors, I said I'd have some observations. This is the first: there were no female authors in the list. I have long known that my reading of female authors has been significantly less than that of male authors, and I've never quite been able to work out why. I distinctly recall the first book by a female author I read: it was The Mistress of Silence,...
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A riot of authors
There is a poll on at normblog, in which people are asked to submit their ten favourite authors. Mine were as follows (where the top 3 are in rank order, with the remainder in no given order): 1. Charles Dickens 2. Raymond Chandler 3. W.G. Sebald J.M. Coetzee George Orwell Roald Dahl Cormac McCarthy John Steinbeck Stephen King Ian McEwan Three other authors I would have liked to include on the list were Fyodor Dostoyevsky,...
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Quotation of the week
'But come, Pinch, before I say anything more to you, just run over the reasons you have for being grateful to him at all, will you? change hands first, for the box is heavy. That'll do. Now, go on.' 'In the first place,' said Pinch, 'he took me as his pupil for much less than he asked.' 'Well,' rejoined his friend, perfectly unmoved by this instance of generosity. 'What in the second place?' 'What in...
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A normal state of affairs
[A] collection with many unread books is an altogether normal state of affairs. That's norm, and he's right....
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Dickens on America
Whilst we're on American politics (and, let's face it, we're going to be on American politics until at least November), Charles Dickens's observations of America on his trip there in 1842 is well worth a look. American Notes for General Circulation (available online here, though the Penguin Classics edition is excellent) is a tour mainly around the east coast of America, and Dickens doesn't hold back with what he finds — both good and bad....
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Will they be read tomorrow?
I was taken with this article on the Guardian book blog, regarding whether or not dead author's reputations will endure. On the one hand, it seems a pretty silly question — of course some author's reputations will endure, mainly as a result of their writing. The wider point that seems to be being made, however, is that not all those who are feted today will be read tomorrow, though they will be remembered. On closer...
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Important book matters
War? Whatever: Norm deals with the important stuff in life as well, such as his collection of cricket books, crying over books and, most recently, the question of annotating books. I offer here my own thoughts on annotating books. I've done it, and will continue to do it. I tend to do it in particular types of books, which are mainly non-fiction. The annotation is done in order to remember a passage, or note something...
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Grass Soup by Zhang Xianliang
The literature concerning dissidents in prison is both large and distinguished. By far the largest contribution to that literature that I know of is the Russian one — authors such as Dostoyevsky and Solzhenitsyn being key (and the consequently obvious) examples. I came to Grass Soup knowing of the similar conditions in China to those I knew a little of in Russia, and unfortunately finished it in much the same state. The success of Dostoyevsky...
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Crying over type (spoilers)
Via normblog comes the consideration of crying over books. I've cried at loads of books, and probably more so than films. Bizarrely, the first book I can recall crying over was Steven King's It, which I think was something to do with reading a book over 1,000 pages long and sharing the pretty horrendous tribulations faced by the characters. I felt like I knew Bill et al. pretty intimately by the end of it, and...
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The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
After reading a positive review of this book from the London Review of Books, I bought The Year of Magical Thinking as a Valentine's present. This demonstrated a fundamental misunderstanding of the topic of the book — the death of Didion's husband — and my choice therefore had the potential to be a cringe worthy one by any standard. Ultimately, however, I was saved by Didion's contemplations and by the sheer elegance of her writing....
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The Child in Time by Ian McEwan
McEwan, probably the pre-eminent British writer, has been criticised as being a master of the set piece (the balloon scene that opens Enduring Love, for example) but not necessarily of the novel. The Child in Time could initially be dismissed as another series of set pieces. Take, for example, this quote from the novel itself: At the end of a day in which he had come close to smashing a car, seeing a man crushed...
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The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards
With a professional interest in disability and the likely outcomes for disabled people in society, as well as a specific interest in Down's Syndrome, I had expected to enjoy The Memory Keeper's Daughter much more than I did. Aside from its style — comments on which I shall limit myself to saying only that it made excessive use of unnecessary adjectives — the novel seemingly failed to maintain the implied focus of its title, i.e....
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Amsterdam by Ian McEwan
Ian McEwan has won the Booker prize only once, and that was for Amsterdam. This is peculiar, for both Atonement and especially Enduring Love are better books as, indeed, is Saturday. Of its type, Amsterdam is a better book than most — indeed, it is a very tight novel that says no more than it needs to about politicians, the creative process and the savagery of middle class suburbia. But measured against the ingenuity of...
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The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud (3 volumes) by Ernest Jones
I am a fairly fast reader, but the 700-odd pages of close set text of this abridged version of Jones's three-volume biography still took quite some time to read. Nevertheless, I could happily have spent twice as long reading this book, for its subject and his work is sublime. There are only two criticisms and one observation to make. First, the criticisms: even in this abridged version, I would have preferred some more details of...
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City of Glass by Paul Auster
Any book in which its author turns up as a major character treads on tricky, post-modern grounds. Like a box within a box, it builds a conceit around whatever narrative the book purports to tell, making the reader forever conscious of what twist or turn might come next. Two major books that have such characters are Martin Amis's Money and J.M. Coetzee's Slow Man. Only one of these books does it satisfactorily (Amis's) because the...
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The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
My fear concerning this book was that authentic Afghan culture would be appropriated for the purposes of a routinely decent novel, whose setting sought only to capitalise on the new familiarity with which the world knows Afghanistan. I was three-fifths wrong, for it is precisely those sections that take place in Afghanistan which are the best. Here, Hosseini threads a lovely narrative, interspersing it with set pieces of heightened and unpleasant violence (pieces improved by...
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Slow Man by J.M. Coetzee
Another sparse novel by the Nobel Laureate, J.M. Coetzee, and one I enjoyed until precisely the point that the "character" Elizabeth Costello turned up. From that point, it turned into a meta-story which explores the well-worn path of author-as-God, instead of continuing to be the meditation on age, ability and potential that I had been enjoying. Following as it does Elizabeth Costello (the novel), this seems to be a worrying direction in which Coetzee has...
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A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
This, at the age of 27, was my first Dickens novel. By my age, Dickens had already written The Pickwick Papers and Oliver Twist; I suppose the least I could do was read one of his novels. Reading Dickens was much harder than I anticipated, and it took me a good 100 pages of this 370-page version to settle down. The fault, obviously, lies with the reader, for Dickens's prose is a delight. What I...
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Lady With Lapdog and Other Stories by Anton Chekhov
This is a generally excellent collection of short stories by the Russian often considered to be the master of the form. Throughout, I especially enjoyed the themes of arts versus the sciences, the nature of the character contained within that ongoing battle, and especially the concentration on rural life as opposed to that of the cities. On rural life, Chekhov concentrates on particular families and how they come to represent the cultural and artistic life...
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Elizabeth Costello by J.M. Coetzee
Elizabeth Costello is not a novel. More accurately, it is a collection of essays, brought together under a flimsy literary / fictional framework, that allows the author to think out loud about the writing process, vegetarianism and the nature of travel. Nearly all of the novel has been published elsewhere, and Costello herself seems no more than Coetzee in women's clothing. Coetzee's last novel was Youth. I hope he turns back in that direction for...
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Raise High the Roofbeams, Carpenters by J.D. Salinger
A cutting short story, Salinger's Raise High the Roofbeams... uses the set piece of a wedding at which the groom doesn't turn up to once again consider the phonies whose supposed intelligence only reveals their small-mindedness and need for familiarity. Certainly, a useful epilogue to Catcher in the Rye, and containing a character who is the happiest and most steadfast precisely because — as opposed to being in spite of — his muteness and deafness....
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A Pale View of the Hills by Kashuo Iziguro
The implications and inferences — hallmarks of subtlety — were what set out The Remains of the Day as a great novel: Ishiguro's butler Stevens is a steady study in character. In A Pale View of the Hills, as with his latest novel, Never Let Me Go, Ishiguro's inferences and subtleties aren't so good as the author might have intended, so that each book seems shallower and less resonant than his only great novel so...
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The downsides of Amazon
Having added an Amazon link to arbitrary constant, I do, of course, have to take the rough with the smooth. So whilst I would whole-heartedly recommend your viewing Goodbye Lenin, for example (review here), I'm afraid I wouldn't recommend your reading or watching John Pilger, Michael Moore or Noam Chomsky, all of whom have appeared in the Amazon links. You have to take the rough with the smooth, I guess, and that particular triumvirate is...
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The smell of good design
This is a brief post to highlight that Penguin has published both Perfume and One Hundred Years of Solitude — two of my favourite books — in its Modern Classics range (see here and here respectively). This is a very fair assessment of the place of these books in modern literature, and I for one am looking forward to having these new additions on my shelf. For a review of Perfume, please see here. A...
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Quotation of the week
Lawyers are all right, I guess... I mean they're all right if they go around saving innocent guys' lives all the time, and like that, but you don't do that kind of stuff if you're a lawyer. All you do is make a lot of dough and play golf and play bridge and buy cars and drink Martinis and look like a hot-shot. And besides. Even if you did go around saving guys' lives and...
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Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling
I've not read it, but there's something remarkably apt about the fact that Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is one of the 3 books Liberal Democrat MPs are likely to take on holiday with them this year. Ming as Dumbledore? Lembit Opik as Harry? The Liberal Democracts as a force for good in this world, traversing hell and high water to battle evil and ensure good reigns supreme for eternity? I think not....
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Quotation of the week
The "quotation of the week" has lapsed on arbitrary constant. This post aims to re-introduce it with the following long quotation from Raymond Chandler's The Long Good-bye: There's a peculiar thing about money[.] In large quantities it tends to have a life of its own, even a conscience of its own. The power of money becomes very difficult to control. Man has always been a venal animal. The growth of populations, the huge costs of...
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Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
One of the most difficult novels I have read to date, not because of the subject matter, but because of Nabokov's incredible style which simply sweeps all before it. There were certainly stages at which I was considering giving up, but there are ecstatic sentences like the following that kept me going to the end: Being a murderer with a sensational but incomplete and unorthodox memory, I cannot tell you, ladies and gentlemen, the exact...
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Quotation of the week
When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand. — Raymond Chandler I have recently discovered Raymond Chandler — as in The Big Sleep, The Long Goodbye and Farewell, My Lovely. He has immediately become one of my top five authors. Delightful stuff, examples of which are here. I don't know about you, but I could do with a whiskey and sour......
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Perfume: the story of a murderer by Patrick Süskind
In reviewing films and books, I use the adjective "remarkable" quite often. Indeed, at the rate I use it, I'd have deemed everything to have been so remarkable so as to make nothing really remarkable at all (sound familiar?), which simply won't do. There are few things, after all, very worthy of remark. My over-use of aforementioned adjective will, then, be a trait I'll attempt to limit in the future. But before I do, it...
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Arthur & George by Julian Barnes
Barnes is an excellent, intelligent and witty author, whose other work — and especially Flaubert's Parrot and Talking It Over — I have immensely enjoyed. In Arthur & George, though executed very well, I couldn't help but feel that, in seeking to challenge himself in the process of research and harnessing an actual event into a semi-fictional narrative, Barnes has unfortunately put to one side the compulsive narrative which could have made this a great...
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Eating Pavlova by D.M. Thomas
As a r to the London Review of Books, I could never really understand why there were so many adverts for psychoanalysis-based journals and books. It seemed to me that everyone was obsessed with Freud. After reading Eating Pavlova — a semi-fictional account of Freud's (assisted) death — the link between literature and psychoanalysis, as partly espoused by the LRB, became a little, but not much more clearer. The only other D.M. Thomas novel I've...
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If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things by Jon MacGregor
This is a piece of fiction whose title has always put me off reading it. It's basic contention is that all around us and in everything that happens there is always something remarkable to be found; or, indeed, that everything is remarkable. This is an idea to which I would respond that, if everything is remarkable, then nothing is really remarkable at all. I have written at length about this before, when considering the Tarkovsky...
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Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell
George Orwell is one of my favourite authors. In non-fiction, he conveys his experiences with compassion and realism, though occasionally wont to exaggeration, and in his fiction he creates quasi-tragic characters through whom he explores his own politics and includes cutting comments on politics and (English) society. He is, in my and many others' opinion, a complete author. Down and Out in Paris and London is classic Orwell. His experience as both a plongeur in...
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Coming Up for Air by George Orwell
Orwell's Coming Up for Air is one of his earlier, lesser-known novels. As with all of Orwell's fiction, though, there is a single, quasi-tragic figure who ponders on their particular lot in life and finds the outcome quite disagreeable. Being one of his earlier novels, Coming Up... is relatively unsophisticated for Orwell, which is particularly noticeable when it comes to the various political oratories that take place throughout. Still, Orwell vehemently conveys his personal frustration...
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To Have and Have Not by Ernest Hemingway
A tough book to read at the start of the year, for it hardly engenders hope or gives promise of reward for effort, Hemingway's To Have and Have Not could never be accused of anything less than unremitting honesty. In the word's of Hemingway's hero / protagonist, Harry Morgan: No matter how a man Alone ain't got not bloody chance (Interesting background to the novel and film here.)...
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26 books a year
Via a very interesting link from kottke comes this list of books Art Garfunkel, of Simon and Garfunkel fame [who else? — ed], has read since 1968. Now, I'm not one to be bothered by how many books people have or have not read. I couldn't care, really. But if you're going to boast about how many books you've read, which, may I suggest, Mr Garfunkel is doing, then I'd hope you might have read...
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Economics freak show
Following up on my recent review of Freakonomics is this succinct and (in my opinion, at least) accurate summary as to why the book was overrated, from Diane Coyle in Prospect's over- and underrated books of 2006: Economics as freak show. Depressingly, this seems to be the only way to gain a wider audience for the empress of the social sciences, other than multinational bashing....
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Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
Widely promoted, widely read and wildly received, it seems nearly everyone has raved about Freakonomics and its "unusual" view on How Things Are. Though I enjoyed the book, I couldn't help but think that (a) Levitt's findings, or the subject matters they considered, weren't all that unusual; and (b) there was an awful lot of self congratulation in the book (advanced primarily through excerpts from a single article written by Dubner on Levitt). The chapter...
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The British Museum is Falling Down by David Lodge
David Lodge is an author whose work is very easy to read; at the same time, due to his standing as Emeritus Professor of English Literature, his novels are absolutely full of literature and, almost by a process of osmosis, a reader feels like they've taken in a vast swathe of a literary canon merelyby reading one of Lodge's short (and entertaining) novels. The British Museum is Falling Down, Lodge's third novel, makes literary allusion...
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Books: an update
I'm not keeping as good a track of the books I've been reading as had been hoped. This post, then, is a brief overview of my book-reading highlights of the year, with a view to improving the record I keep of read books next year. A two-week holiday back in April provided the best reading materials of 2006. In no particular order: Saturday showed Ian McEwan to still be an excellent and still macabre writer....
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Quotation of the week
An excellent article to finish the week, from which this quotation is taken: [W]hen it comes to the state of the novel, to the future of the novel, I feel rather optimistic. Numbers don't count where books are concerned, for there is only one reader, each and every time only one reader. That explains the particular power of the novel and why, in my opinion, it will never die as a form. Every novel is...
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DC Confidential by Christopher Meyer
In the style of the Guardian's digested read: My wife is brilliant; I'm brilliant and the war — well, it was some tough business, no? Did I say my wife was brilliant? Or, to paraphrase Marshal Bosquet: C'est suffisant, mais ce n'est pas la guerre....
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Booker winner
As promised, this post confirms that I was indeed wrong to tip Sarah Waters to win the Booker Prize for 2006, following last night's award going to Kiran Desai. It is rumoured that the judges said in their award speech: We were originally unanimously in favour of Sarah Waters The Night Watch for the prize. However, once we read that arbitrary constant had tipped it we decided to change our choice merely to ensure that...
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Quotation of the week
1 I was reading The Merchant of Venice. 2 I was reading 'The Merchant of Venice'. 3 I was reading The Merchant of Venice. The man who cannot see that No 1 is the best looking, as well as the sufficient and sensible form, should print or write nothing but advertisements for lost dogs or ironmongers' catalogues: literature is not for him to meddle with. — George Bernard Shaw, quoted in the Guardian style book,...
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Revisiting the 2006 Booker Prize longlist
A few weeks ago, I gave my prediction for the winner of the 2006 Booker Prize. Going the way of most of my predictions (apart from the memorable time I won a considerable amount of money on the Eurovision Song Contest in 2002) you'll be pleased to hear that my prediction has not even made it onto the shortlist. Not being put off by this, I hereby change my prediction and think that Sarah Waters,...
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2006 Booker Prize longlist
The longlist for the 2006 Booker Prize was announced today and includes some impressive authors: David Mitchell, Sarah Waters, Peter Carey and Howard Jacobsen (whose journalism I praised a long time ago). The immediate favourite for the prize is David Mitchell, whose Black Swan Green certainly sounded very good in the Radio 4 adaptation of it — an adaptation I enjoyed very much. However, and despite Mitchell’s excellent pedigree, I don't think Black Swan Green...
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Golfing Dreams by John Updike
I am not familiar with John Updike's literary output; neither have I read very much literature concerning golf. Neither of these facts — either individually or considered together — put me off reading Golfing Dreams, however, in which a series of short essays and fiction concerning golf written by Updike are brought together into one compendium. Golf fascinates me. I could sit and watch it for hours, and indeed I do. I also very much...
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Take a Russian on holiday
Via norm comes this wonderful bit of trivia: Mikhail Nikiforovich Katkov, editor of a paper called the Russian Herald (Ruskii Vestnik), faced the possibility of blank pages when in the hot, late summer of 1865 he made two extraordinary purchases. One was the serialisation of a novel by Tolstoy - which he wanted to call, first, 1805, and later, All's Well that Ends Well - that we now know as War and Peace. As if...
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Globalization and Its Discontents by Joseph E. Stiglitz
There are three reasons why policy — that is, the course of action undertaken by a government or organisation to achieve a given aim — fails: bad policy, bad implementation and bad luck. In the case of the International Monetary Fund (imf) and its "rescue" programmes for the developing world, Stiglitz argues its continued failure to support developing countries as they face economic and financial crises, or make the transition from an authoritarian regime to...
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We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families by Philip Gourevitch
It is, of course, difficult not to be moved by any literature concerning mass extermination — the gravity of the subject guarantees sober reflection for the reader of such books. And so in coming to Philip Gourevitch's We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families, concerning the Rwandan genocide of 1994, a reader expects — and, I suspect, hopes for — the worst to appear before their eyes so...
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Thomas Paine on blogging
I've just finished reading Thomas Paine's great Common Sense, which forms one part of the Penguin Books — Great Ideas series. The two quotations given below lead me to believe that, if Paine weren't a blogger, he'd certainly approve in the strongest terms of the practice:In the following pages I offer nothing more than simple facts, plain arguments, and common sense; and have no other preliminaries to settle with the reader, than that he will...
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The Art of Captaincy by Mike Brearley
Note: this is a guest post by Paul Canning The latest book I've been reading is The Art of Captaincy by former England cricket captain Mike Brearley. The book was originally written in 1985 but was re-released in 2001 with an updated introduction. Unlike most cricketers, Brearley was most famous for his skills as a captain rather than his skills as a cricketer. As someone who played in the team as a specialist batsman (without...
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Bookish snobbery
In response to the response and non-response of some well-known authors on the top 10 books that children should read, Oliver Kamm is right in asserting that: The power of literature lies not in its faithfulness of description of a world that readers are familiar with, but in its illumination of enduring human concerns. He is equally right to assert that: Good writers retain popularity not because of arbitrary pedagogical preference but because they see...
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Je ne sais quoi
Apart from those possessed of blind faith who go along with the view that only God can know the truth about the truth, most people assume that what we don't know could be known by somebody looking hard and skilfully enough at the problem. I'm not sure if in the 21st century there is quantitively more in the world that isn't known, but certainly we know that there is more we don't know. The problem...
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The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis raises many questions for people who are facing a time of transition and transformation. The tale of the unfortunate Gregor Samsa can make us think more deeply about our own identity, about the fluidity of what we take to be stable and fixed, and about the perils and miracles of our own metamorphoses. One of the most compelling elements in Kafka's genius is precisely his uncanny ability to translate the highly...
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Yoga For People Who Can't Be Bothered To Do It by Geoff Dyer
I'd held back on buying Yoga For People Who Can't Be Bothered To Do It for some time. It had always given me the rather particular feeling that is was a diary/travelogue of (and for) people who are quite rich, having made their money from not doing very much, wandering around "discovering themselves" in remarkably expensive and exclusive exotic locations. With the advent of the Christmas holidays, however - and a sudden feeling of good...
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The Sea by John Banville
One of our Christmas presents this year was a set of the books nominated for the 2005 Booker Prize. These were:The Sea - John Banville Arthur and George - Julian Barnes A Long Long Way - Sebastian Barry Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro The Accidental - Ali Smith On Beauty - Zadie Smith I've just finished reading the first on that list – and the eventual winner of the prize – John Banville's...
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Reproaches from the Past — LRB (7) vol. 26
An excellent article (subscription required) on William Keegan's new book, "The Prudence of Mr Gordon Brown", including nothing more than a small history of the position of Chancellor of the Exchequer and a brief, perceptive analysis of Brown's (and Ed Ball's) positioning on Europe over the last few years....
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Arthur Miller dies
After reading an article on him recently and being in the process of picking up his works, it is with sadness I learnt that Arthur Miller has died. Miller was one of the most significant American writers of the 20th Century, whose fame was further magnified by his short-lived marriage to Marilyn Monroe...Miller was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Death of a Salesman in 1949 at the age of just 33.The BBC obituary will no...
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What Henry didn't do — LRB (6) vol. 26
Michael Wood has written extensively on revered authors for the London Review of Books; see, for example, "Impossible wishes" on Thomas Mann, "Things I said no to" on Italo Calvino and most recently "The thing" on Marcel Proust (subscription required for all links). He has also written some nice articles on Henry James, "What Henry didn't do" being one and "What Henry knew" being the other. Within the former, some nice ideas on existence and...
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Back to reality — LRB (6) vol. 26
This (subscription required) is an excellent article by David Edgar on Arthur Miller - a nice reminder of reading The Crucible during GCSE and not really understanding any of it. Discussion of Miller's being influenced by Anton Chekhov and Henrik Ibsen is interesting, as well as the discussion of structure of his plays, the main ones discussed here being:An Enemy of the People (written by Ibsen in 1881) All My Sons (1947) Death of a...
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The Plague by Albert Camus
A remarkable novel, the plague symbolising the German occupation of France and the creeping onset of Fascism and Nazism during the second world war. A forerunner of the sparse and powerful language used by J.M. Coetzee in his various writings. For example (p.16):It was as if the earth of which our houses stood were being purged of its secreted humours - thrusting up to the surface the abscesses and pus-clots that had been forming in...
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What does a snake know, or intend? — LRB (6) vol. 26
An article by David Thomson (of Biographical Dictionary lordship) on the American author Joan Didion and her influence by Hemingway:Here is something that goes back to the best in Hemingway. That while he sought a style as cold and clear and shriven as the river water coming down from the Pyrenees... and while he and Didion aspire to that fuss-free prose, still they remain stricken by feelings - the very object of their exercise. And...
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The Political Animal: An Anatomy by Jeremy Paxman
This excellent and highly readable book is yet another class and accessible offering from the smooth operating Newsnight host. Packed full of acute observations, excellent anecdotes and personal conviction, it is a pleasant introduction to the political sphere as a whole and the personalities it contains. On student politics (p.2):Student politics achieved the curious feat of being self-important and trivial at the same time. [T]here were huge battles to be fought about Vietnam, the military...
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Vol. 1 Essays, Journalism & Letters: An Age Like This 1920 - 1940 by George Orwell
Unfortunately, I only started making notes on this first volume until it was nearly finished and thus have recorded barely a fraction of that which is notable. An excellent index, however, should help my finding anything to refer to in future. Orwell on the impending war that was to become the second world war (p.382):I must say we were very glad to be out of England for the war crisis. One gets so fed up...
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Waiting for the Barbarians by J.M Coetzee
The twice Booker-winner author's third book, written in 1980. Sparse, unsparing and with a clarity that pierces with formidable strength. From (p.6):On the other hand, who am I to assert distance from him? I drink with him, I eat with him, I show him the sights, I afford him every assistance as his letter of commission requests, and more. The Empire does not require that its servants love each other, merely that they perform their...
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I must be mad — LRB (1) vol. 26
On psychoanalysis and its proximity to honesty.This is reality, normality, health. Forgetting makes us robust. A shiff of anaesthetic before we start the day does a world of good. Those who can't forget we call madmen or artists...[But] there's a frightful exhilaration in these suicidal explosions of truth-telling. They are terrific to hear about...In his essays 'Concealment and Exposure' and 'The Shredding of Public Privacy', Thomas Nagel argues for the importance of a clear division...
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The CEO of the Sofa by P.J. O'Rourke
A collection of articles and essays by P.J. O'Rourke brought together under subject matter with an irascible sense of humour found as a common denominator. The quote at the start states:One year in the life of a man who said, "Mind if I put my feet up? I think I will take this lying down".The American Republican humourist on mobile phones (p.3):And that is what Daddy loves about having cell phones - not having one....
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Avenue Victor Hugo books
The Avenue Victor Hugo bookstore is closing down. This isn't just a result of advertisers and marketing executives whoring their products. It isn't just competition. Is it the result of the publishers? The charges against them are considerable: Marketing their product like so much soap or breakfast cereal, aiming at demographics instead of people, looking for the biggest immediate return instead of considering the future of their industry, ignoring the art of typography, the craft...
