Category Archives: Journalism

Jack Chick and hell

This may be the secret of the appeal of Chick-type fundamentalism. It’s paranoia as entertainment, since no one could possibly be frightened of most of the things that terrify him. Continue reading

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good riddance to 1819

I’m not entirely sure when Hazlitt’s Table Talk was written, but I was reading it over Christmas, at my sister’s house, and discovered, to my horror and astonishment, the best description you could imagine of recreational comment pages. It comes … Continue reading

Posted in Blather, Journalism, Literature, Net stories | 1 Comment

Academic manners

The current LRB has a wonderful example of one style of academic review: the long essay outlining the book that ought to be written about the subject, concluded by a paragraph dismissing the work under review. But what a paragraph! … Continue reading

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undiscriminating reads

on trains in and out of London Ken MacLeod, the Night Sessions: very good and tightly imagined account of what a war on religion would actually mean; and what a secular Scotland would be like. Written with great sympathy for … Continue reading

Posted in God, Journalism, Literature, Sweden | 8 Comments

Auden at press conferences

I don’t often go to press conferences nowadays, but whenever I do, I think that Auden had been there too, on both sides. In my edition of the Collected Shorter Poems, the pertinent observations face each other across pages 190-191. … Continue reading

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Burned over

I’m sorry not to have posted here much. I have been very busy, but also approaching the condition of upstate New York, ca 1830, when it was known as the burnt over district because of the continual evangelical revivals which … Continue reading

Posted in Blather, Housekeeping, Journalism, Literature, nördig | 14 Comments

Sisters, not parent and child

An interesting and important point from John Barton’s essay on conceptions of the afterlife in the current TLS (not online): Jews and Christians do not of course believe the same things, but the structures of the two faiths are much … Continue reading

Posted in God, Journalism | 3 Comments

Wiley Interscience

… may sodomise themselves with spiky reindeer antlers. I am paying their exorbitant charges for article reprints: $34.44 with VAT; and each one comes with the following boilerplate: IMPORTANT: You now have 24-hour access to this content. Access to this … Continue reading

Posted in Blather, Journalism, Science without worms | 10 Comments

Random resumption

I know I have written nothing here for the last month. I don’t think that’s good. It started off as a consequence of Guardian blogging, where I felt that I had to turn everything that occurred to me into a … Continue reading

Posted in Blather, Journalism, Sweden, Travel notes | 8 Comments

From the literary magazines

My new year treat has been to ignore all comments about atheism on the Guardian site. 320 at last count. Instead, I went for a long walk and caught up with the LRB and TLS. The personals in the LRB Continue reading

Posted in Journalism | 4 Comments