Northern Laughter

Karl Miller: Macrone on Scott, 10 October 2013

The Life of Sir Walter Scott 
by John Macrone, edited by Daniel Grader.
Edinburgh, 156 pp., £65, February 2013, 978 0 7486 6991 2
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... of his authors. What he was not was a gifted writer. Walter Scott, ‘The Great Unknown’ of the anonymous Waverley novels, was known to the point of dedication by many Scots, who did not mind that he had no taste (as an Episcopalian) for the national religion, or for clergymen, that he was an enthusiast for birth and breeding, and that he hated the Reform ...

At the Movies

Michael Wood: ‘Five Easy Pieces’, 9 September 2010

Five Easy Pieces 
by Bob Raphelson.
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... start to roll over the same shot, which does not change, only registers passing cars, the desolate anonymous spot, the grey weather. The credits end, and the shot continues for another second or so. Why don’t we have the movie to which this would be the ending? It’s possible that we do, and I’m not getting it. Possible too that we’re too far away in ...

Bang-Bang, Kiss-Kiss

Christian Lorentzen: Bond, 3 December 2015

Spectre 
directed by Sam Mendes.
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The Man with the Golden Typewriter: Ian Fleming’s James Bond Letters 
edited by Fergus Fleming.
Bloomsbury, 391 pp., £25, October 2015, 978 1 4088 6547 7
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Ian Fleming: A Personal Memoir 
by Robert Harling.
Robson, 372 pp., £20, October 2015, 978 84 95493 65 1
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... unobtrusive. Exotic things would happen to and around him but he would be a neutral figure – an anonymous blunt instrument wielded by a government department.’ As for all the sex, ‘perhaps Bond’s blatant heterosexuality is a subconscious protest against the current fashion for sexual confusion.’ Coward disagreed, and told Fleming (whom he addressed ...

What a Ghost Wants

Michael Newton: Laurent Binet, 8 November 2012

HHhH 
by Laurent Binet, translated by Sam Taylor.
Harvill Secker, 336 pp., £16.99, May 2012, 978 1 84655 479 7
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... viewer): the story might make us wonder whether such an existential gesture is enough. Jardie’s anonymous sacrifice raises questions that are central to Binet’s novel. Hannah Arendt returned several times to the Hellenic idea of the ‘shining deed’, an act that would grant a kind of immortality to the otherwise vanishing actor, in a world where only ...

Like a Failed Cake

Edmund Gordon: Keith Ridgway, 6 December 2012

Hawthorn & Child 
by Keith Ridgway.
Granta, 282 pp., £12.99, July 2012, 978 1 84708 741 6
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... victims include a stoner student who gets shot and a frightened office worker who’s being sent anonymous emails accusing him of paedophilia – ‘I bet fifty quid if we grabbed his home computer we’d get a stash of little girl pics,’ Child says. Hawthorn is gay and Child is black, but this isn’t a sign that Ridgway’s version of the Met is ...

Under Her Buttons

Joanna Biggs: Ottessa Moshfegh, 31 March 2016

Eileen 
by Ottessa Moshfegh.
Cape, 260 pp., £16.99, March 2016, 978 0 224 10255 1
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... lives and opinions were worthy of respect and curiosity.’ Eileen thinks they might want to be anonymous but ‘none of them did. They’d all write their names on these forms much more legibly than in the visitors’ ledger, and answered so ingenuously, it broke my heart.’ Being a young woman was a trap, being older isn’t an improvement. The Bell ...

Obey and Applaud

Thomas Cohen: Exchanging Ideas in Early Modern Venice, 5 June 2008

Information and Communication in Venice: Rethinking Early Modern Politics 
by Filippo de Vivo.
Oxford, 312 pp., £60, October 2007, 978 0 19 922706 8
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... Venice could take a stand against the Interdict only by subterfuge, often by publishing anonymous writings under false colophons. And by attacking the Interdict the authorities were admitting the existence of a ruling that, officially, they denied. The Interdict struggle ended in a face-saving compromise and had few lasting consequences. It wasn’t ...

Formulaic Thrills

Thomas Jones: A mathematical murder mystery, 20 January 2005

The Oxford Murders 
by Guillermo Martínez, translated by Sonia Soto.
Abacus, 197 pp., £9.99, January 2005, 0 349 11721 7
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... causes. There is further evidence of foul play, however. Seldom reveals that he has received an anonymous note consisting of Mrs Eagleton’s address, her time of death, a ‘neatly drawn circle’, and the announcement that this is ‘the first of the series’: the killer is apparently challenging him to a battle of wits. Brought together at the scene of ...

Post-Matricide

Christopher Tayler: Patrick McCabe, 5 April 2001

Emerald Germs of Ireland 
by Patrick McCabe.
Picador, 380 pp., £14.99, January 2001, 0 330 39161 5
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... that the whole thing might be taking place inside Pat’s head. Everything is recounted by an anonymous, seemingly omniscient but obviously unreliable third-person voice; and the narration is such a garble of mismatched registers, self-contradictions and pointless circumlocutions that it adds yet another layer of unreality to something which has little ...

Leisure’s Epitaph

John Pemble: The Victorians, 8 March 2007

Consuming Passions: Leisure and Pleasure in Victorian Britain 
by Judith Flanders.
HarperPress, 604 pp., £20, August 2006, 0 00 717295 8
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... of mind has been mapped in intricate detail. But beyond it there is the hidden experience of the anonymous – the inner world of ‘the masses’, ‘the populace’, ‘the people’. These Victorians were collectively hugely conspicuous. In an age of industry, urbanisation and democracy they were significant as never before. They supplied the needs of an ...

Abecedary

James Francken: Ian Sansom, 20 May 2004

Ring Road: There’s No Place like Home 
by Ian Sansom.
Fourth Estate, 388 pp., £12.99, April 2004, 0 00 715653 7
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... by a hodgepodge of new developments. The town is ‘everywhere and nowhere’; it is ‘perfectly anonymous’. The unnamed – and unlovely – Irish town at the centre of Sansom’s spirited and generous first novel owes something to his relocation. Ring Road’s entertaining preface denies the debt – ‘the town is not meant to be a replica of any ...

Over the Rainbow

Slavoj Žižek: Populist Conservatism, 4 November 2004

... serves as the justification for what the large majority of individuals experience as a vast anonymous power regulating their lives. As to the ideological aspect of their struggle, Frank states an obvious truth which, nonetheless, needs to be restated: the populists are fighting a war that cannot be won. If Republicans were effectively to ban ...

Prosecco Notwithstanding

Tobias Gregory: 21st-Century Noir, 3 July 2008

The Lemur 
by Benjamin Black.
Picador US, 144 pp., $13, June 2008, 978 0 312 42808 2
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... Manhattan these days. The Lemur’s extras are smiling waitresses, not seen-it-all barkeeps; its anonymous New York voices say ‘yes-how-may-I help-you?’ not ‘how you doin’?’; its background noise is the hiss of espresso machines. If you don’t catch a ride to the Hamptons with your father-in-law in his chopper you must endure the discomforts of ...

Diary

Jenny Diski: The Je Ne Sais Quoi, 15 December 2005

... The traditional philosophers, Aristotelians, the Schoolmen, were content with mystery. In 1638 an anonymous speaker at the Bureau d’Adresse offers this version in a debate on the causes of tidal motion:Just as it would be fruitless to wonder what the cause of a horse’s motion is, given that even the most ignorant people recognise that it comes from the ...

Humans

Richard Poirier, 24 January 1985

Slow Learner 
by Thomas Pynchon.
Cape, 204 pp., £8.50, January 1985, 0 224 02283 0
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... are Egyptian working-class people, the others are of various nationalities, but each is relatively anonymous and poor. None is given a place in the main plot, but all are allowed extensive musings on their daily lives, their loved ones, especially their children. Thus in the story Porpentine reports on climbing a tree so as to look into the hotel room where ...