A PLACE FOR SIDEWAYS TRAINS OF THOUGHT
Flann O’Brien was a pen name of Brian O’Nolan, an Irish author who is most famous for three novels, At Swim Two Birds, The Third Policeman and the Dalkey Archive. He also wrote a column for the Irish Times from 1940 to 1966 full of wild imaginings. I once read an anthology of his Irish... Continue Reading →
When I was in my twenties, I used to live in Bologna in a 6th floor flat together with 5 other people. The flat was on the outskirts of town and I remember you could see a football pitch, a roller hockey rink, the motorway, the railway and just beyond it the airport and all... Continue Reading →
Nabokov's most beautiful passage of prose
I remember clearly the first time I managed to understand a poem in classical Chinese. It was like seeing someone perform an unexpected conjuring trick, shaking out a piece of rope and then tossing it up into the air to make it stand stiffly like a stick . Then back again. There was certainly some... Continue Reading →
The other day an article appeared in the New York Times about ethnic jokes in Dagestan. I am not sure how accurate a portrayal this was of life in Dagestan but some of the jokes were very funny. An Avar is driving through Makhachkala with a Lakh in the passenger seat. Spotting a red light, he... Continue Reading →
زيتون Very recently I took a low-cost flight. On the evening before I left I read that the limit on hand luggage was 5 kg. and, since I didn't want to send any luggage, I decided to wear all the clothes I was going to need and stuff as many belongings as possible into... Continue Reading →
For some time now New York Review Books has been re-publishing books which have been out of print for a while. This seems to me to be an excellent idea. In fact, it might be good to have a one week moratorium on new books once a year, call it Reprint Week, and dedicate it solely to old books which have been... Continue Reading →
A few months ago I spent quite a while cataloguing my books using LibraryThing, the most interesting tool of this kind I have come across. While most similar systems allow you to fetch bibliographical data using ISBN numbers or searching Amazon, this one makes it possible to search in 690 library data bases throughout the... Continue Reading →
I am not sure that there has ever been a book about film quite like François Truffaut's interviews with Alfred Hitchcock. Two masters discuss the craft of cinema. Truffaut listens carefully and gets Hitchcock to provide full disclosure of what he thinks is needed to make a film tick. I have had the book for... Continue Reading →