June 4th rolls around again…. Twenty years gone by. What a wild ride it’s been! It’s worth looking back on what life was like before the historical change. Mostly I remember the boredom and the greyness. There was dirt everywhere and alcoholism was rampant as people sought refuge from the dull, mind-crushing realities of every […]
TMO interview with Premio Strega winning Italian novelist Paolo Giordano “A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked […]
World leaders like Angela Merkel, Lula De Silva, and Ban Ki Moon appear on the front page of the ‘International Herald Tribune’ announcing a historic climate-saving deal. Full details here There was only one catch: the paper was fake. Looking exactly like the real thing, but dated December 19th, 2009, a million copies of the […]
Any English—speaker to whom Vaclav Havel has mattered owes a debt they’re probably unaware of to Paul Wilson. His work as the Czech writer’s translator began thirty years ago but I discover, over a cup of coffee off Russell Square, that he first came to London from his native Canada ten years before that, to […]
Blogtrotter review of Michel Faber’s ‘The Fire Gospel’ http://bit.ly/U1dw4 # Litblogs on Kindle? A lot of fuss about nothing, according to the Literary Saloon http://bit.ly/t0vFq # In case you were searching for an online comic-book adaptation of Joyce’s Ulysses http://bit.ly/47JbSl # And from the same people, as we run up to bloomsday it’s worth following […]
Yesterday’s Gazeta Wyborcza had an article about the decline of the Irish economy. It’s headlined “Womens’ Spendthriftery Caused The Crisis” and consists of quotable quotes from people affected by the depression in Ireland. Among them is one Newton Emerson, Irish Times columnist, who is quoted as saying “In the majority of marriages it’s the woman […]
The Times takes a look at Faber’s history, as the publisher celebrates its 80th birthdayhttp://bit.ly/TrXZa # The telegraph turns great literature into tweetshttp://bit.ly/13tw5a # Ruth Padel is the first female Oxford professor of poetryhttp://bit.ly/BDtZl # Trailer for Art Spiegelman new book ‘Be a nose’a rare glimpse at the secret scribblings of an American original.http://bit.ly/6WgLC # […]
Listening to Diamond Head’s most enduring of epics (although forgive the mild misnomer “epic” as it happens to be under 5 minutes long), offers the chance to discuss exactly why Stourbridge’s hairiest, most underground rockers never quite grasped the glittering prize of major league renown. As the title track of 1983’s critically mixed Canterbury swaps range from […]
Frank O’Connor, one of the masters of the form, was repeatedly asked what differentiated a short story from a novel or novella, and over the course of his career he come up with some interesting answers. For example, interviewed by the Paris Review he suggested that one of the crucial dividing lines was not length, […]