I thought the story that appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle about “the Compact”–“About 50 teachers, engineers, executives and other professionals in the Bay Area have made a vow to not buy anything new in 2006 — except food, health and safety items and underwear.”–introduced a commendable idea. Until I reached the following paragraphs: “The […]
“Of course, before Eastern Europe can really take off a generation of workers with the communist mentality will have to die off.” This is a cliche that has been kicking around these parts for at least the last fifteen years. In general, I’ve always been suspicious of it. It sounds a bit too much like […]
I may return to my increasing involuted reflections on the writings on David Foster Wallace at a later stage, but events, as they say, have intervened. The increasingly bizarre and sinister protests over the putatively anti-Islamic cartoons that appeared in the Danish paper Jyllands-Posten have already generated a few clich�s, which are being readily embraced […]
“Even Satire must stay within the limits of civilized and decent behaviour” – Maurizio Gasparri in his capacity as Minister for Communications[1] “There was nothing to laugh about. It wasn’t all satire. In certain moments […] it appeared like a political manifesto. Without balance. It crossed the line.” – Marcello Veneziani, member of the Board […]
Ireland, post-Celtic Tiger, is increasingly obsessed with competitivity, transparency,and best practices – in all sectors. Sue Norton sees benchmarking all around her, and wonders on the implications.
Those of us misfortunate or misguided enough to have dealings with Microsoft’s word processing programme will be aware of Bill Gates�s campaign against the passive voice. (I’ll leave aside Microsoft�s cretinous insistence on commas before all relative pronouns.) But the passive voice is coming under attack from other quarters too. Into my hands has fallen […]
Dutch art from the seventeenth century is an illustration of life and culture and, taken as a distinct period, it is characterised by acute attention to detail of the physical world. Pictures record the world but they are inexorably bound up with the perception of the world by the artist. The emergence of the Dutch […]
Over the course of three novels and eight non-fiction books, addressing subjects as diverse as jazz, D.H. Lawrence, World War One and John Berger, Geoff Dyer has quietly become one of the most interesting and admired writers of his generation. His work has become particularly known for the distinctive approach he takes to the thin […]
Robert Newman's third novel, The Fountain at the Center of the World, has been described variously as serious and intelligent, moral, and according to the Three Monkeys Online review “a resoundingly successful attempt to construct a dramatic relationship between the public and the private”. The New York Times meanwhile wrote that “it reads like what […]