There’s an interesting article here by Neal Gabler on, amongst other things, the authority of the critic, and of the shifting battle-lines between high culture and popular culture. There are far too many points there to be addressed in a single post of reasonable length, but two in particular seem to me to be worthy [...]
Archive for January, 2011
28 Jan
Palindromes
Everyone has their favourites, of course. My favourites are: Tulsa night life: filth, gin, a slut And, simply because it makes no sense at all: Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas I have been told that there is a book full of palindromes entitled I Love Me, Vol I. And I thought that was the first [...]
23 Jan
The mysterious appeal of Holmes & Watson
Even to a fellow aficionado of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s work, it is difficult to explain the attraction of the Sherlock Holmes stories. To others, it is virtually impossible. Just what is the attraction? It’s clearly not the plotting: if it were, there is no reason why readers should return to these stores repeatedly, even [...]
20 Jan
The sternness of Swift and the swiftness of Sterne
It was Joyce who suggested that Swift and Sterne should have exchanged names. Certainly, it’s difficult to imagine two authors more different in temperament and in outlook, and reading Gulliver’s Travels and Tristram Shandy back to back – as I did not so long ago – is quite an eye-opening experience. Gulliver’s Travels is a [...]
15 Jan
Bartleby the Scrivener, and Billy Budd, Sailor
Please note: The following contains “spoilers” for both “Bartleby the Scrivener” and Billy Budd, Sailor. But since the actual plotlines of these works seem to me among their less interesting aspects, knowing them beforehand is unlikely to detract from the experience of reading these works. Before tackling that monster Moby-Dick, I thought it best to [...]
15 Jan
Robert Browning on difficulty
“I can have little doubt that my writing has been in the main too hard for many I should have been pleased to communicate with; but I never designedly tried to puzzle people, as some of my critics have supposed. On the other hand, I never pretended to offer such literature as should be a [...]
10 Jan
A reflection on public music libraries
There is a fascinating interview here with pianist Paul Lewis. Paul Lewis was, I gather from this interview, a teenager in Huyton, just outside Liverpool, in the mid-80s. At exactly the same time, I was working in Liverpool. It was my first job, and I was living in Rainhill, just a couple of train stops [...]
9 Jan
Ribble Valley, Christmas Eve, 2010
Not about books this time, nor even a rant: merely some pictures I took with my digital camera on Christmas Eve, 2010, in the Ribble valley in Lancashire.
8 Jan
On re-reading
Why re-read? Why, when there are so many books out there, would anyone want to go through what they already know? Is there not something timid and unadventurous about sticking to what one knows rather than exploring what is new? Does this not prevent one from widening one’s horizons? The very sound of the word [...]
8 Jan
A Karamazov Diary: 12 – Retrospect
I finished this over the Christmas break, and I now find myself, somewhat to my surprise, missing it: I had become quite accustomed to entering that curious fictional world Dostoyevsky presented, a world so unlike any other I have encountered, whether in fiction or in real life. Not that Dostoyevsky’s fictional world is completely unrelated [...]
