Category Archives: Literature

God and the Daily Mail

Posted on May 15, 2004 by acb

No time for a proper review, but I read A.N. Wilson’s novel about God and the Daily Mail on Thursday, while I was watching the spare computer reboot, reinstall, and fail to work properly. Three times. That’s another story, one … Continue reading → Continue reading →

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Migraine work

Posted on May 5, 2004 by acb

I spent yesterday afternoon and most of the night lying on a bed rocking in a deep swell while a rusting anchor chain was hauled and poured through my temples. I still don’t feel up to real work, so instead … Continue reading → Continue reading →

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Devaluation

Posted on April 30, 2004 by acb

In the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, Cleanthes remarks on “the adorably mysterious and incomprehensible nature of the Supreme Being.” How long has it been since “Adorable” meant “worthy of adoration”? If anything nowadays is described as “adorable and utterly divine” … Continue reading → Continue reading →

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where I went wrong

Posted on April 21, 2004 by acb

All these years, and I have never understood what creative writers do. Instead of shambling down to the kitchen and scrawling urgent, indecipherable notes on the shopping pad while the coffee brews, I could be preparing to work like the … Continue reading → Continue reading →

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another Douglas Adams anecdote

Posted on March 31, 2004 by acb

Though it seems to me that the joke was on Mac snobs here. At the end of the conversation I last blogged, I found another paragraph. DNA speaks: “I was talking to Nathan Myhrvold the other day, and I said … Continue reading → Continue reading →

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Asia begins at the Landstraße

Posted on March 9, 2004 by acb

said Metternich and I used, when I stayed in Vienna, to walk to that dusty street to feel it. I couldn’t feel anything. But it’s still a wonderful sentence, in some ways unsurpassed until the morning of March 9th, 2004, … Continue reading → Continue reading →

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Sex

Posted on January 23, 2004 by acb

I can’t use the word when I’m writing for the Guardian’s web site, so I decided this week to write about journalistic ethics there instead. But I’m still interested in sex. Earlier this week I read three widely different novels … Continue reading → Continue reading →

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I want a universe not parallel to this, please.

Posted on January 22, 2004 by acb

Can anyone please explain why an Amazon.com search on John M. Ford, (no link for obvious reasons) turns up a list headed by the 1535 Edition of John Calvin’s Insitututes of the Christian Religion? There will be no marks awarded … Continue reading → Continue reading →

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Finnish manhood

Posted on December 23, 2003 by acb

I have just finished Mikael Niemi’s book Popular Music and I’m breathing in exhausted wheezes, I’ve been laughing so hard. It is the story of a young man’s growing up in the utmost extremity of Swedish lapland, in the town … Continue reading → Continue reading →

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hard-boiled

Posted on November 13, 2003 by acb

In Boston, I suppose I ought buy Robert B Parker’s thrillers, but it’s been decades since he tipped from pastiche into self-parody. I’ve always thought that the reason America is full of serial killers is that they kill women on … Continue reading → Continue reading →

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