I first read something by Muriel Spark in my late twenties and instantly loved her writing; I had that feeling that there was something new and great in the world that grows rarer the further you are from childhood, and that I hadn’t experienced for a long time. It wasn’t just how much I liked what she did, but how different it was, how individual. Continue reading
Glass by Alex Christofi. My review for Shiny New Books.
Alex Christofi’s debut novel is a mildly eccentric, likeable and interesting not-quite romp.
Read the full review at Shiny New Books…
I have come to wonder whether I will make it through my twenty-third year. In the nine months since my mother died, I started a new job, which led me to meet a number of new people, one of whom I killed in a misunderstanding. But other things happened in the first twenty-two years that I should explain first.
Well, allow me to introduce myself to you as an advocate of Ornamental Knowledge. You like the mind to be a neat machine, equipped to work efficiently, if narrowly, and with no extra bits or useless parts. I like the mind to be a dustbin of scraps of brilliant fabric, odd gems, worthless but fascinating curiosities, tinsel, quaint bits of carving, and a reasonable amount of healthy dirt. Shake the machine and it goes out of order; shake the dustbin and it adjusts itself beautifully to its new position.
Robertson Davies 1951 Tempest-Tost (part one of the Salterton Trilogy)
Davies’ work is published by Penguin. Read an interview with him in Paris Review here. See what he has to say about gulls here.
Russell Brand doesn’t vote. Having been goaded about this by Jeremy Paxman on Newsnight in 2013, Brand wrote a book, Revolution, to show that he’s both right and in earnest. Many people are angered by others not voting, it’s a shibboleth of sorts, but Brand’s position seems reasonable to me; there are many causes for indignant scepticism in public life and much of it is a sham. I don’t share his seeming surprise, though, that wealth buys influence and that rich and powerful people generally want to protect and expand their wealth and power. You’d think someone on the threshold of middle-age (he’s 39) would have noticed a little earlier. This is what George Orwell published in 1941, when he was 38. Continue reading
This is where I explain leaving my job to resume full-time freelance writing and editing after a break of a dozen years. Last week I wrote about being told how ‘brave’ I was (a chilling phrase), how I’d had a mixed bag of it last time as a freelance, and ended with the question, ‘What has changed to make this any sort of a good decision?’ Well now… Continue reading
Paul Fishman 