It must be great to be an artist. You get to puncture pretentious ideas about art and literature and no one has any come back because you’re the one doing the art, not just talking about it. Here is Beksiński in conversation with Henryk Brzozowski: Zna Pan na pewno te wszystkie komunały, które od lat […]
Andrzej Lepper, leader of Samoobrona, a farmers’ party, has left the coalition government. Primesident Kaczy?ski accused him of warcholstwo – brawling, troublemaking. In response, Lepper called this accusation “chamstwo,” which might be translated as “boorishness” but has also been translated on occasion as “assholeishness.” Although “warcho?” (troublemaker) may seem innocuous enough, the word has interesting […]
“Jealousy is the illusion of clairvoyance.” Well, I thought it was good. The above apercu is from recentish review in the Times Literary Supplement by Craig Raine of a London production of James Joyce’s only play, Exiles. The TLS was also quoted a while back by John Boland, better known as the Indo’s TV critic. […]
Way back when, Monty Python had a sketch mocking the insularity of BBC newscasters. The “News for Parrots” delivered an unashamedly parrot-centric view of the world: “Good evening. Here is the News for parrots. No parrots were involved in an accident on the M1 today, when a lorry carrying high octane fuel was in collision […]
Yes, it’s good to be back in Poland, where pedestrians are inexorably being pushed off the streets by people handing out leaflets (schools, loans) to pedestrians. Turning, inevitably, to the papers, I find one intriguing story amongst the usual mire of vituperation and sleaze. Ludwik Dorn, deputy prime minister and minister for the interior, flew […]
What is the driving force of the modern U.S. economy, that $12.5 trillion colossus? Can it be found in Silicon Valley, recovered from the dot.com slump and rejuvenated by the revivalist-tent atmosphere of Web 2.0? Or is it manufacturing, leaner than ever and profiting from IT-led productivity surges? Or is it even the industrial-military complex, […]
The English-language web edition of Der Spiegel offers a rather chilling portrait of that supposed expat heaven, Dubai: If one accepts the commonplaces of the debate on world cultures, Dubai is an impossible city. On the one hand, it’s more cosmopolitan than eastern Germany and southern Italy, more tolerant than Poland or Louisiana, and consumers […]
On the letters page of Saturday’s Irish Times the names of over 60 Irish and Ireland-based academics were listed under a petition calling for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions. The rubric under which the letter appeared, “Academics call for a ban on Israel,” might have exaggerated their case, but the petitioners are nevertheless quite […]
In my previous post, I suggested that the late Oriana Fallaci succeeded in making smoking a fag seem quite glam. Susan Sontag, some of whose journals were published last Sunday, could also strike a fine pose with a ciggie.* (Caption: Sontag at a symposium on sex in 1962 at the Mills Hotel, now defunct, on […]
Oriana Fallaci, the Italian journalist noted for her vitriolic attacks on Islam, has died , aged 76, in a hospital in Florence. A proper journalist, she was almost killed in Mexico, made Kissinger tug at his collar, and was willing to go to jail for her views (although some of them were a bit barmy).Also, […]
