Category Archives: Literature

hard-boiled

Posted on November 8, 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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It’s out

Posted on October 10, 2003 by acb

And it’s beautiful. All you American readers, go and buy this book at once. Columbia University Press have done a wonderful job on the worm, including illustrations, which Simon and Schuster never bothered with in the English edition. This is … Continue reading → Continue reading →

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Adverbs to avoid

Posted on October 10, 2003 by acb

Enormously, suddenly, hugely, vaguely. I don’t know about you, but those are all polyfilla words for me. Continue reading →

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keeping up with the de Joneses

Posted on September 26, 2003 by acb

A post at Languagehat put me in mind of something Eamon Duffy said on Sunday: he’s working on the manuscript annotations in late mediaeval prayer books. These were surprisingly common, especially after the invention of printing. People wrote all sorts … Continue reading → Continue reading →

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the trolls are done

Posted on August 20, 2003 by acb

At last: the whole story runs as one page. Continue reading →

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the next best thing

Posted on July 31, 2003 by acb

“his problem, how to eat your cake and yet reject it with scorn, is one of his own making and he seems to solve it in the usual way, deluding himself that the next best thing to renouncing a pleasure … Continue reading → Continue reading →

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Roy Foster

Posted on July 23, 2003 by acb

I am in the middle of profiling him: another reason for silence; and this has involved reading the second volume of his Yeats biography. It’s a tremendous book, by two good tests. I wanted to read more of the poetry, … Continue reading → Continue reading →

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the horror

Posted on July 7, 2003 by acb

Last night I watched the Philip Larkin film, something on TV which could for once properly be described as horrifying. So much of the excellence of the poetry survived: it was wonderfully read, in such a natural tone that the … Continue reading → Continue reading →

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Small pleasures

Posted on July 2, 2003 by acb

I had a really nice letter from Johann Änglemark a couple of weeks ago, who had been led to the Harry Martinson poem by one of the twisty little links with which this site abounds. So I went back this … Continue reading →

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A young man makes his way

Posted on June 12, 2003 by acb

One of the books I have been meaning to read for at least 20 years is Eckermann’s Conversations with Goethe, which I bought when I was a factory worker in Sweden, at a book sale in <a href Continue reading →

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