A good thing about the internet is it allows you to check if that vague feeling you had about the lie of the media land is correct. The vague feeling I had – vague because I don’t monitor newspapers – was that there has been a rash of articles about how this recession is not […]
Short sharp shock is the primary philosophy Brooklyn’s Radio 4 unleash on their 2002 album Gotham. Appropriately titled, the post punk Noo Yoik angst transmits aesthetics as dour as a Monday bank holiday stuck in a bedsit with Stephen Gerrard and Damien Duff as company, with the mildly unfair Gang Of Four label sitting just […]
In Daniel Orozco’s brilliant short story Orientation, there’s a moment when – during an introduction to an office environment – the narrative slips into the startling: “Anika Bloom sits in that cubicle. Last year, while reviewing quarterly reports in a meeting with Barry Hacker, Anika Bloom’s left palm began to bleed. She fell into a trance, […]
Over at the Guardian book blog there’s a debate blowing after a post dealing with Jim Crace’s plans to retire. The post has provoked all sorts of reactions regarding the merits of a writer’s age/youth, many largely missing the point made by Crace. Perhaps the most worrying thing, though, regarding the post is the implication […]
As I write, September 25th seems like it’s going to be a long long day. Far too much of what makes the “average” shrink tick occupies my own allotment of infinity, where laboured breathing buffs up a damp silvery fog incumbent of what should be Thursday. Not for the first time, and most certainly not for the last, […]
Lynnrd Skynrd‘s Sweet Home Alabama had two things going for it (more than many songs): A riff to launch a thousand ships, and an authenticity that was carved into the song by both its lyrics and delivery. Its two-fingered salute to Neil Young was just part of it. This song stood on its own merits, […]
Some posts ago we took up the ‘who’ll be literature’s radiohead’ argument up, suggesting that there are already a number of established authors who have been giving away their work a la In Rainbows – for example the Wu Ming foundation or Mega-bestseller Neil Gaiman. Word comes through (via Lizzy’s Literary Life) of a new […]
Back in the ‘90s, I read Tobias Wolff’s memoirs of growing up in a struggling, single-parent family – This Boy’s Life (1989) – and of serving as a junior officer in the U.S. airborne division in Vietnam – In Pharoah’s Army: Memories of a Lost War (1994). I was impressed by both books, for the honesty […]
“‘Modern art is actually a means of espionage. … If you know how to read them, modern paintings will disclose the weak spots in US fortifications, and such crucial constructions as Boulder Dam.’” This is not the paranoid ravings of some modern-day war on terror nut. It is quoted in Who Paid the Piper? The […]