Posted in David Foster Wallace, satire, books on Sep 19th, 2008 3 Comments »
I’m afraid I’m about to again demonstrate my adhesion to the Western Death Cult that comes down to me from my maternal side. During the summer my wife* ordered a French translation of a collection of short stories by an American writer by the name of David Foster Wallace. The title, ‘Brief Interviews with Hideous […]
Posted in photography, books on Apr 17th, 2008 4 Comments »
Guess who got a new digital camera?
The photo is of my father-in-law’s library, which is now situation in the recently converted attic. It’s his first opportunity to store his significant collection of books in one room and it’s a fine collection. Although a lot of it is not to my, perhaps narrow taste there […]
Posted in History, books on Feb 12th, 2008 1 Comment »
Thomas Jones unpicks James Wood’s How Fiction Works and finds that a critic who declares himself an enemy of literary theory can also find himself out of the loop when it comes to history too.
He has a strong sense of literary history - divided into two periods, pre- and post-Flaubert - but his sense […]
Posted in irish culture, books, Ireland on Oct 17th, 2007 4 Comments »
While we should be delighted by the news last night that Anne Enright has won the 2007 Man Booker Prize for The Gathering we should not automatically use it as a jingoistic expression of national pride. One can remember those absurd stories of parents who previously had no interested in Cricket rushing out to […]
Posted in cinema, books, Russia on Oct 12th, 2007 No Comments »
Mikhail Bulgakov’s Heart of a Dog is perhaps not as well known as his masterpiece Master and Margarita. Both feature animals who are partly human, or at least are animals who have characteristics that one considers to be human.
In The Master and Margarita, the companion of the visiting Professor (who may or may not […]
Posted in dublin, books on Jul 27th, 2007 7 Comments »
Inspired by this thread I went out to Blackrock and was just in time before Carraig Books closed for lunch. I got two excellent second hand books: one, a Four Courts hardback, Reading Irish Histories, Texts, Contexts and Memory in Modern Ireland, which feeds directly into Conor’s original Reveries post.
The books editor […]
Posted in Art, books on Jun 21st, 2007 10 Comments »
In an excellent article (sub req) on the Russian theorist Mikhail Bakhtin in the latest edition of the London Review of Books, Terry Eagleton explains why the ‘once obscure Soviet philologist is now a star of the postmodern West’ and, in doing so, provides a very handy critique of postmodernism.
Just as Bakhtin’s […]
Posted in books on Apr 12th, 2007 3 Comments »
Kilgore Trout is dead! Or rather Kurt Vonnegut who brought the science fiction writer, who could only get published between the pages of a porno mag, to life has passed away at the age of 84 as a result of head injuries sustained after a recent fall.
Of course, Kurt Vonnegut was a science fiction […]
Posted in books, Media, blogging on Mar 23rd, 2007 8 Comments »
So many things have passed me by this week.
Firstly, within the Irish blog-o-sphere there’s the impressive news that Twenty Major has secured a two book deal with Hodder Headline Ireland. It’s only after you hear the news that it makes perfect sense and you can’t help telling yourself that it was only a matter of […]
Posted in books on Jan 12th, 2007 No Comments »
Sean Baite, in a comment on the Knacker Philosopher King Size bit, mentioned Cioran’s early fascist leanings in Romania and I must admit it was news to me. That’s probably because I know little about Cioran.
But a quick search on the Web has thrown up some interesting tidbits of information.
“A thorough and vivid […]