“... as if they were people he knew, noting Whitman’s ‘good humour’, Joyce’s ‘tireless self-regard’, Edmund Wilson’s ‘dogged honesty’. In a coy foreword, he pretends to be diffident about his criticism (‘Another book. Another slain forest’), and sets himself up as an amateur, dabbling in criticism to pay his alimony. But for all his ...”

“... would impute any lack of psychic integrity in the man himself. True enough, he was a peculiarly self-contained person whose inner life was always opaque, even to his most intimate companions. But there was no harsh discontinuity or irreconcilable inconsistency in his temperament, and we have no reason to suppose that he was nervously guarding some guilty ...”

“... action: but it will not explain the personal commitment. Given Adam Smith’s insistence that self-love was a more influential mechanism of social betterment than benevolence, and his scepticism about the probity of officials or the likelihood of a man working as hard for the public as he would for himself, the conscientiousness with which he did his work ...”

“... his outlay of compassion, squandering now, though, less care on the universe than on himself. Self-pity became his constant theme. In place of the rather studied, substanceless, arabesque contortions of the early verse, Berryman offered vital human drama – either his own or that of his serviceable alter ego,‘Henry’. The improvement in readability is ...”

“... other people’), whereas Murry’s frankness was often a kind of falsity arising from his deep self-deception. It was the shining earnestness of this self-deception that initially appealed to people. He radiated ‘a kind of religious enthusiasm’, Huxley remarked. ‘At first, people tended to catch fire from this ...”

“... where the whole of this mighty process could be comprehended. Hence world-history was Teutonic self-understanding, and part of its preparation for dominance in the coming Age of Caesarism. Although the author does not quite say so, An Unfinished History of the World is best understood along similar lines: that is, as a British Philosophy of the ...”

“... is understandable but perilous … it is historically evasive and may, in the worst outcome, prove self-defeating.’ Why so? Mulhern is quite clear about this. For him, as for, say, a group like the Tel Quel group in Paris, criticism is part of the class struggle, an attempt to overthrow the bourgeoisie and ‘the dominant culture’. He announces a battle to ...”

“... so that it might grow in its own true way’. Mark Mathabane’s book, by contrast, is not at all self-critical and never escapes from or transcends its adopted styles. This is very much a book for an American audience. At one point he successfully manipulates an Afrikaner by telling ‘the bastard what he wanted to hear’. His book tells Americans what they ...”

“... FitzGerald’s perception of the common Puritan tradition. ‘Rootlessness and the search for self-definition’, she argues, are ‘permanent and characteristic features of American life’, the result of ‘occupational and geographic mobility and the loose weave of the society’. Jerry Falwell, the Rajneeshee, the gay activists of San Francisco and ...”

“... his detractors were. Epstein found the attitudes of critics understandable: they were a dishonest, self-serving lot. ‘It is,’ he said, ‘the almost insane hatred of the average man and woman that is baffling.’ What is it about Epstein and England that explains the rows and tetchy relationships, the ‘insane hatred’ – and, more pertinently the ...”

“... hold out: ‘Our biggest surprise,’ he said, ‘is that juche (Kim II Sung’s strategy of ‘self-reliance’) actually seems to work – if at a very high cost.’ But reunification will also proceed cautiously because the participants recognise that, while the process will lead to the disappearance of only one state (the North), it could bring about ...”

“... all internal opposition: high-tech Japan is leading the world into ‘a fantastic dystopia of self-emptied, idea-vacated, and purpose-lost production, consumption, and daydreaming’. Miyoshi has a distinct advantage when it comes to making such sweeping statements because, as a former Japanese subject, now a naturalised US citizen, he really is both an ...”

“... concerns the role of the Wets. This chapter, ‘Why the Moderates Lost’, involves some painful self-examination. Lord Gilmour, who admits to ‘grave dereliction of duty’, asks himself whether the Wets could have done anything else. He concludes that he himself should have resigned at the time of the 1981 Budget, and not awaited dismissal at the end of ...”

“... it is the lodger who has disappeared. When sections of these houses are rented they are made self-contained. What makes Halle’s book refreshing for readers outside his discipline is that it considers art in its domestic context. Only in this way, he says, ‘can its meaning for an audience, and the nature of its links with material and social life, he ...”

“... autobiography. Obsession with meat-eating goes back to the emergence of a modern, élite, Indian self-consciousness in Bengal in the mid-19th century; here, though, the thrust was in the opposite direction, and was at once more radical and innocent than Gandhi’s vegetarianism; several educated Bengalis (frequently lampooned by other Bengalis) championed ...”