Thankfully, the voices speaking out against the comments made by the ‘moderate’ President of the Senate, Marcello Pera, have been numerous. Amongst those criticising Pera’s warnings against a ‘mestizo’ nation, were former Prime Minister, and one time leader of the Democrazia Cristiana party, Giulio Andreotti. “The President of the Senate has his merits. Last year […]
Thankfully, the voices speaking out against the comments made by the ‘moderate’ President of the Senate, Marcello Pera, have been numerous. Amongst those criticising Pera’s warnings against a ‘mestizo’ nation, were former Prime Minister, and one time leader of the Democrazia Cristiana party, Giulio Andreotti. “The President of the Senate has his merits. Last year […]
OK, picking on John Irving and now Sebastian Faulks might get me accused of shooting fish in the proverbial. But I couldn’t let this go. There’s a profile of the popular novelist in the last Observer— the strapline caught my attention:”He’s the Balzac of Holland Park, a ‘must-read’ novelist who seems happiest writing about turn-of-the-century […]
Occasionally my friends mock me. There are plenty of reasons why they do so but one among many is that I sometimes make pronouncements on a book without having gone to the bother of actually reading the thing. It’s not that I haven’t done some research–I might have read the opinions of quite a few […]
Just when you thought they were gone, the novelists-from-the-eighties-who-the-critics-couldn’t-kill are back in force. First, we had Bret Easton Ellis’s Lunar Park, now the writer that Ellis fondly refers to as “The Jayster” is back, with “The Good Life.”Jay McInerney’s first novel in more than six years deals with ‘story of Luke, who is late for […]
Those left-wing, pinko-liberals will tell you that Italy’s military presence in Iraq [about 3,150 personnel] is part of an illegal occupation force. They’ll tell you that it’s all about oil, or somesuch [the Italians just happen to be based in the Nassiriyah area, securing an area with a gigantic oil field for which the Italian […]
Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all convictions, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. [W.B.Yeats – […]
The View from Bologna, like many Italians, returns to work today after the traditional August vacation period. Bad weather coupled with uncompetitive prices appear to have hit the domestic Italian tourist market yet again, while a report in the weekend’s press suggested that Italians in the North of the country have started shopping in Switzerland, […]
Walter Kirn is one of those critics whose writing is usually better than the stuff he’s reviewing. He shares James Wood’s knack for the pithy putdown (Wood on John Updike: “It seems to be easier for John Updike to stifle a yawn than to refrain from writing a book.”) but not the latter’s propensity to […]