John Gray is an English philosopher, and the former “School Professor of European Thought” at the London School of Economics. He came to my attention thanks to his very public spate with Steven Pinker, conducted over the course of years, […]
Charles D’Ambrosio’s The Dead Fish Museum
by on March 4, 2019
Prior to reading The Dead Fish Museum, Charles D’Ambrosio was to me only a name, vaguely familiar but with the unreality of rumour. I had read nothing he had written, nor seen him recommended by the writers and critics I’m […]
W.H. Auden’s Forewords And Afterwords
by on February 27, 2019
Of all writers, poets have the poorest prospect of earning a living by their work alone. The market for verse is very small, and shrinking, and the patrons of yesteryear – the Roman general, the medieval monarch, the Church – […]
Salman Rushdie’s Imaginary Homelands
by on February 24, 2019
Thirty years ago this month, a fanatical cleric in a foreign country openly called for the murder of a British citizen, a humble novelist born in Bombay, for the “crime” of blasphemy. The author was Salman Rushdie, the cleric the […]
Mark Bowden’s Black Hawk Down
by on February 15, 2019
In the spring of 1993, two years into the Somalian Civil War, the United Nations launched UNOSOM II, a joint venture between the U.N. and the United States military to stabilize the country and deliver much-needed food aid. UNOSOM I, […]
Frederick Exley’s A Fan’s Notes
by on February 9, 2019
Twice now, in the span of as many months, I have been bowled over by a book. The first was John Williams’ Stoner, and the latest is Frederick Exley’s novel-memoir A Fan’s Notes. The two works are united in their […]
Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God
by on January 27, 2019
An unintentional theme uniting my reading, of late, has been greatness unacknowledged or unappreciated. Leonard Gardner’s Fat City and John Williams’ Stoner deserve far more acclaim than they have won, and certainly more than they knew in the lifetimes of their authors. […]
Lionel Trilling’s Prefaces To The Experience Of Literature
by on January 23, 2019
Of the many great literary critics of the 20th century now dead and unfashionable, I feel the loss of Lionel Trilling most acutely. A consolation: he passed away in 1975, before the universities of the Western world turned against their […]
Erich Fromm’s Escape From Freedom
by on January 18, 2019
Is freedom to be feared? What a cruel irony it would be, if the centuries-long process of human emancipation – from tyranny, from god, even from privation – resulted not in our ultimate happiness but in our ultimate isolation. How […]
Anthony Burgess’ One Man’s Chorus
by on January 9, 2019
I recently came across Milton’s famous lines, from “Areopagitica,” about a good book being “the precious lifeblood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.” Neither time nor overly enthusiastic quotation of those […]