At Home with the Joads
“Remember when we…?” Those anecdotes are the stuff relationships are made of, our own series of personal legends, the stories that we can roll around in our memories to remind […]
The Best Cephalopods in Literature
Here’s Steinbeck describing a hunting octopus in Cannery Row (1945) , and the quality of the writing would convince me that he witnessed this, even if I hadn’t known that he […]
Truth per Square Inch
“This book can go under the microscope. You’d find life under the glass, streaming past in infinite profusion. The more pores, the more truthfully recorded details of life per square […]
The Well-read Troll
Will Self has a book to sell and it’s 2014, so he needs to generate some online traffic. Instead of retitling his novel as “The Top 8 Beauty Tips that […]
The Coffee Shop
The sound of grinding beans, footsteps, a splash of water, the tearing off of paper tissue from a roll, porcelain clinks and metallic chinks, scraping spoons, puffs of steam. Staff […]
Hong Kong
It’s already starting to feel like a hallucination. The constant sweat, the blazing sunshine alternating with roaring thunderstorms, the impossible stacking of shops, the endless procession of perfect legs. The […]
The Delights of Deep Space
Spaceships travelling at many times the speed of light; humanoids meeting, greeting, shooting and loving other beings, their tentacles and eye-stalks swaying in the breeze; characters with unpronounceable names speaking […]
Hemingway’s Humblebrag Holiday
Sometimes I get the sensation that I know how something great was written – that, through intuition alone, I can determine the process, without any further research. [It’s neither scholarly […]
The Billionaire of Monte Cristo
I just finished reading The Count of Monte Cristo. The first third took me a week to get through; the last third also took me a week. The middle third […]
Uncle Grim Blues
[To the tune of Roadhouse Blues by The Doors] Woke up this morning to a scraping at my door. Woke up this morning to a scraping at […]
Inconspicuous Creation 