Category: t
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Yesterday, my friend sent me this picture, taken from a moving bus. – –
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––In a discussion of William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience, Harold Bloom (2004) answers: Since Innocence and Experience are states of the soul through which we pass, neither is a finality, both are necessary, and neither is wholly preferable…
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Peter Ackroyd’s The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde (1983) is a fictional memoir of Wilde, written (supposedly) between 9 August 1900 and his death on 30 November that year. In the book, Wilde writes in a letter to a friend, ‘the…
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In The Grand Design: New Answers to the Ultimate Questions of Life (2010), co-written by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow: The Chinese tell of a time during the Hsia dynasty (c. 2205-c.1782 BC) when our cosmic environment suddenly changed. Ten suns appeared in…
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Download The Pipettes’s “Santa’s On His Way”! Absolutely free. ––
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I came across this interview with Kathleen Fitzpatrick on Nic Sebastian’s blog Very Like A Whale and was intrigued. In July, Kathleen submitted some poems to us on behalf of her husband, W.F. Lantry. Royston, J and I selected “Rainbow Bridge”…
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This post was originally written on 9th September, 2009. Foyles Bookstore, London Tonight we saw John Banville (who is also Benjamin Black) at a free author’s talk organised by the Foyles Bookstore. In the event, Banville discussed his latest novel,…
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I was gripped from the opening seconds of Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker about an elite Army bomb squad whose main job is to defuse roadside bombs. The film uses suspense masterfully to suggest the tension and fear of the…
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“It was on account of these things that mamma got her for such low pay, really for nothing: so much, one day when Mrs. Wix had accompanied her into the drawing-room and left her, the child heard one of the…
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Baozi Inn, ChinatownSaturday 4th Decemer, 2010, 12:30pm
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–The Ghost is based on the novel by Robert Harris of the same title. We thought it was a fine old-fashioned thriller; it reminded one of both Hitchcock and the paranoid thrillers of the 1970s. Directed by Roman Polanski, the…
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Seen at the South Kensington tube station on a Saturday afternoon
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James Wood (2008) answers: The kind of metaphor I most delight in […] estranges and then instantly connects, and in doing the latter so well, hides the former. The result is a tiny shock of surprise, followed by a feeling…
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–Ian McEwan (2001) answers: [I]t was the visual impression of an even deeper darkness beyond the light that drew them in. Even though they might be eaten, they had to obey the instinct that made them seek out the darkest…
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Outside lands contiguous with China, emigration has never been promoted by the Chinese state. The spread of Chinese cooking around the world has therefore been colonial but not imperial, carried by peaceful migrants in self-imposed “economic exile.” At least, this…
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Felipe Fernandez-Armesto answers: For almost uniquely, in the repertoire of modern Western cuisine, the oyster is eaten uncooked and unkilled. It is the nearest thing we have to “natural” food—the only dish which deserves to be called “au naturel” without…
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Who doesn’t like Montaigne (1533-1592), the very man who invented the essay genre? His writings are fun, wise, philosophical, sometimes provocative. He says these things: “If ordinary people complain that I speak too much of myself, I complain that they…
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–Loved The Mills Brothers’ version of “You Always Hurt the One You Love”. See Jonathan’s post about the film here. –
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A CONVERSATION HEARD in October 2007. YANG: He said something about lusting after. BURDETTE: Lusting over. Lusting after is more the nostalgia of bad sex. Nostalgia for bad sex. YANG: Do you think he knew? That I would hear? That…
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–The Welsh documentary sleep furiously1 by Gideon Koppel records a year of life in Trefeurig, a small farming community in Wales. The film does not have an obvious structure or narrative. But in its formless way, it documents the slow…
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Learn more here. – – – – – – – –
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This post was originally written on 6th September, 2009. District 9 (official website: www.d-9.com) is about the problems posed by the unexpected arrival of an alien spaceship above Johannesburg, South Africa. When humans board the aliens’ hovering ship (which reminds…
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– Reading Eddie’s poem “Country” reminded me of the following from the film Proof (2005), adapted from David Auburn’s play (2001). Let X equal the quantity or quantities of X. Let X equal the cold. It is cold in…
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What a beautiful poster! Read Jonathan‘s and Todd‘s thoughts on the new HP instalment.––
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