I’m back from the theatre The play ended with a girl leading her father beyond the city walls. The girl was Electra. The man, Oedipus. The city, Thebes. Perhaps those names strike dissonant cords of memory. As they exited the tragedy, the outcast king questioned whether his people were at peace. He’d put out his …
Has anyone ever tried to convince you to write like Dante? Probably not, because who writes poetry anymore?* Modern pen-pushers are busy with blogs, emails and social posts. But we should remember the medieval poet Dante Alighieri. (And not just because it’s Valentine’s Day and he was drippingly romantic.) We should remember him for his …
Authors are great exaggerators I realised that while hammering out an essay on Jules Verne. Verne conceived of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea after seeing a submarine — well, a model of one — at the world fair. So a machine that took passengers under water existed in 1867. Verne’s innovation was making the …
Are you sure, Monsieur Verne? The way scientists and writers interact — I’ve seen it described as a codependency. Authors take inspiration from science. Their stories expand what readers can imagine. Those readers include scientists who engage with experimental ideas. They pull on pristine lab coats and test whether fictions could enter reality. That’s how …
The unease starts with the title Yellowface winks obscenely from bookstore shelves. It stimulates. It sets the machinery of the mind in motion… and then jams its gears. The reader gets the term is racially charged. Recalls ‘Blackface’ – yep, that’s a thing. Thinks of Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. But that’s about all …
Any ending is temporary That becomes clear on the first page of White Teeth, when a despondent Archibald Jones tries gassing himself. The act should have ended Zadie Smith’s novel before the debut had properly begun. But… ‘No one gasses himself on my property,’ Mo snapped as he marched downstairs. ‘We are not licensed.’ Archie …
It is a time of time There was snow last night, I’m told. By the time I was awake, it had been overtaken by grey drizzle. But the mind can play tricks. I can imagine the dancing snow, even as I look out on a pavement dressed in rain. The snowflakes would have whirled in …
Every day, Alain de Botton refuses to touch his trust fund It’s there. Presumably earning interest. But de Botton prefers to live off the sweat of his brow — his own intellectual capital — than rely on his family’s wealth. The fact that philosophy has been good business for de Botton… Well, that’s beside the …
We plunge into The Gunslinger, groping for a beginning On page one, we catch the story by the tail. The gunslinger, Roland, already carries his father’s weapons. They are heavy with bullets. We wonder whether they’ll unload into the man in black. So we’re off — already straining after the finale. And are we any …
Richard Osman has been both sides of the screen Long before he presented television, he watched it, nose smudging the glass. His rule? The closer the better. For when he was a couple of inches of the tube, the flickering reds and blacks took on elaborate life. They became The Dukes of Hazzard. Further back, …
