Eliot Weinberger

Eliot Weinberger’s Angels and Saints is out later this year. ‘What I Heard about Iraq’ was published in the LRB of 3 February 2005.

The American Virus

Eliot Weinberger, 4 June 2020

Half of all Americans receive health insurance through their employers. If the unemployment rate continues at 20 per cent, it is estimated that as many as 43 million will lose their insurance. The administration is continuing to pursue a case before the Supreme Court that will, in the president’s words, ‘terminate healthcare’ under the government alternative, the Affordable Care Act (aka ‘Obamacare’). In Wisconsin, at least 72 people who attended an anti-lockdown rally – where speakers declared that they were unafraid to die to reopen the economy and demonstrators held signs calling the pandemic a hoax – have tested positive. The president tweets: ‘Coronavirus numbers are looking much better, going down almost everywhere. Big progress being made!’ This is not remotely true. He tweets: ‘Great credit being given for our Coronavirus response, except in the Fake News. They are a disgrace to America!’ He tweets ‘OBAMAGATE!’ over and over. He has sent out more than one hundred tweets and retweets in the last 24 hours.

One Summer in America

Eliot Weinberger, 26 September 2019

The president says it is ‘fake news’ that there were mass protests in London against his visit: ‘I heard that there were protests. I said where are the protests? I don’t see any protests.’ The president exults: ‘The meeting with the queen was incredible. I think I can say I really got to know her because I sat with her many times and we had automatic chemistry. You understand that feeling. It’s a good feeling. But she’s a spectacular woman … There are those that say they have never seen the queen have a better time.’ He later hangs a photo of himself with the queen outside the Oval Office, next to the one of himself with Kim Jong-un.

Ten Typical Days in Trump’s America

Eliot Weinberger, 25 October 2018

On Brett Kavanaugh’s first day as justice, the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal to a ruling written by Kavanaugh himself in 2017 when he was an appellate court judge. Kavanaugh had determined that the EPA lacked the authority under the Clean Air Act to enforce an Obama administration rule regulating hydrofluorocarbons, industrial chemicals that deplete the ozone. (And so it begins.)

Story: ‘Not Recommended Reading’

Eliot Weinberger, 7 September 2017

The Whirling Eye (1920) by Thomas W. Benson and Charles S. Wolfe    A psychiatrist, visiting an insane asylum, discovers his old friend Professor Mehlman, who declares that he has been unjustly incarcerated merely because he is in love with a Venusian. Mehlman had constructed a giant telescope in the Andes to observe life on Venus. In the course of his studies, he had become...

Women ‘There’s nothing I love more than women, but they’re really a lot different than portrayed. They are far worse than men, far more aggressive, and boy, can they be smart!’ African Americans ‘I have a great relationship with the blacks.’ Peace Lovers ‘With nuclear, the power, the devastation is very important to me.’

Name the days: Holy Spirits

Marina Warner, 4 February 2021

The strangeness of such religious material again and again makes it incomprehensible that such figures should be considered holy, but if you look instead at their adventures as a remedy for the drudgery,...

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Real isn’t real: Octavio Paz

Michael Wood, 4 July 2013

In 1950 André Breton published a prose poem by Octavio Paz in a surrealist anthology. He thought one line in the work was rather weak and asked Paz to remove it. Paz agreed about the line...

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Spanish Practices

Edwin Williamson, 18 May 1989

Octavio Paz occupies a unique position in the Spanish-speaking world. He is the foremost living poet of the language as well as being one of the most authoritative interpreters of the Hispanic...

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Goodbye to Borges

John Sturrock, 7 August 1986

Borges died on 14 June, in Geneva – which bare fact virtually calls for an ‘English papers please copy,’ as they used to say, so complacently scant and grudging were the notices...

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