Review of The Constant Gardener now available here. Capsule review: Good, but could have been even better.
As someone obliged to regard the artistic endeavours of my (oh so advanced) three-and-a-half year-old daughter with the frowning awe of a latter-day Clement Greenberg, I found this odd project weirdly compelling.Link via Boing BoingMore substantial posts on the way, I hope, including a very belated critique of what I consider to be some very […]
Review of The Constant Gardener now available here. Capsule review: Good, but could have been even better.
My interview with the unparalleled Camille Paglia is now available here.
After a (partially successful) 35-year effort to take the gun out of Irish politics, Bertie Ahern wants to remilitarize Irish public life. At the annual conference (Ardfheis) of his political party, Fianna F�il, Taoiseach Ahern announced that a military parade would be reintroduced to mark the anniversary of the Easter 1916 rising. According to the […]
Poles accepted Harold Pinter’s Nobel prize with good grace, despite the high hopes they had for local boy Ryszard Kapuściński. Old interviews with Pinter and newer ones with his translator were run in the papers and parallels were drawn between him and another local boy, playwright Sławomir Mrożek. Both men have lent their names to […]
Blog entries are often little more than squibs, textual equivalents of a nudge in the ribs and a confidential aside asking “Have you seen this?” However, the occasional blog post has substance and even the vapid ones have the saving grace that they’re free. However, no such excuses can be offered in defence of “professional […]
The Swiss made a rare incursion into the Irish mindset last Wednesday, when their football team’s stolid defense at Lansdowne Road denied the Irish team a place in the World Cup Finals, which will be staged next year in Germany. Given the woeful performance of the Irish team, some pundits have claimed that the Swiss […]
From the Washington Post:”In what may turn out to be one of the biggest free-falls in the history of presidential polling, President Bush’s job-approval rating among African Americans has dropped to 2 percent, according to a new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll.”
According to the Swedish Academy, Pinter is a writer “who in his plays uncovers the precipice under everyday prattle and forces entry into oppression’s closed rooms.” As with every Nobel Prize, one wonders at the political context–is the above comment a dig at the ongoing trial-free detentions at Gitmo?All in all, I think most people […]
From the deluge of stories about John Banville following his (conventional-wisdom alert!) surprising Booker Prize win, the most interesting nugget was offered up by John Boland, whose Saturday TV review in the Indo is always worth reading. According to Boland,”[…]since the day we first met as young subs in the ‘Irish Press’ until he [Banville] […]