“... Marxism and state paternalism. This stems partly from a failure to relocate a sense of self that can cope with the globalised world while remaining in tune with traditional attitudes: ‘What those whites did was to occupy us. It wasn’t just the land: they occupied our very selves, they set up camp right inside our heads.’ The chief ...”

“... for each younger generation, that things aren’t going to be the slightest bit different for my self-aware, sophisticated age group. We’ll all go down babbling about some Rosebud or other. We’ve started already, at first with our signature irony, but increasingly like the old farts our parents and theirs used to be. We’re all old farts now. There ...”

“... Flora Drew’s translation of The Noodle Maker is more graceful than the original, lacking the self-conscious rudeness of the Chinese and the uneasy kinship with Maoist style. The Nobel citation in 2000 described Gao Xingjian’s novel One Man’s Bible as a book ‘settling the score with the terrifying insanity usually referred to as China’s Cultural ...”

“... determined to write Nivison out of the script, however. The show includes Hopper’s one mature self-portrait on canvas but omits its companion, Jo Painting (1936), which is also in the Whitney collection. In fact, Nivison has been all but expunged from the record as far as this exhibition and its catalogue are concerned. At the press preview, the show’s ...”

“... the rich portrayal of Mingus and Dylan’s friendship. Lethem’s approach to race is extremely self-conscious throughout The Fortress of Solitude. The bridge between the two halves of the novel is a piece of Dylan’s journalism, the liner notes for a box set of Barrett Rude Junior, ‘one of the greatest soul singers who ever lived’. Dylan’s black ...”

“... quite different? For contrivances such as these the novelist could be forgiven a Jamesian note of self-congratulation and self-encouragement, usually, in the Master’s case, expressed in French: voyons, voyons, mon bon! Let us see what I, and later what they, can make of this treatment. When Briony comes to the rescue of ...”

“... shells up to them at’ turns its quatrain round with an awkwardness to match any Dreadnought. ‘Self-censorshipped’ may deserve a momentary smile for its nautical pun, but leaning on it as a rhyme word for ‘tight-lipped’ stretches the joke to breaking point. Despite a few misplaced nuts and bolts, and even if the narrative sometimes chunters rather ...”

“... was emphatic and unmistakable in Proust’s text, and had much to do with the cycles of reflective self-contempt and self-analysis that characterise his extended deliberations. But Rose’s Albertine, watching a pair of flamboyant Jewish sisters parading in a hotel ballroom, approves of their openly sexual display. She even ...”

“... to be very intelligent,’ Eliot intoned) were shown to have roots in complex and deliberately self-concealing theories – not only of literature, but of history and economics too. Irreverently probed by Eagleton and others, even the academic subject called ‘English’ began to own up to its stake in the political programme it had been invented to ...”

“... implausible – it isn’t surprising that he should want to hit the child, but would he lack the self-control and intelligence to restrain himself, especially since he knows he’s been set up? He has, after all, faced more formidable enemies. Questioned by the headmaster, Frankie supports Tony, claiming that the teacher hit him for no reason ...”

“... drums are not about to fly (as the line break initially suggests) into some sublime paradise of self-expression, but are threatening to lose the beat, which would strand the soloist in musical outer space. Somehow this doesn’t happen, but the energy of the music – and of much of Kleinzahler’s poetry – derives from a calculated flirtation with ...”

“... that genre persisted – is itself noteworthy, for it confirms that a modern sensibility of the self as something created through a combination of choice and circumstance was becoming part of their culture. There are too few of these stories for them to carry conviction as evidence, however. Appleby’s book, nearly as much as Butler’s, is a ...”

“... dangerous, it’s just as well we went to war. The thinking becomes circular and the prophecies self-fulfilling. Israelis are fond of saying: ‘The Middle East is a jungle, where only might speaks.’ See Qana, and Gaza, or Beirut. Defenders of Israel and its leaders can always argue that the US and Britain behave similarly in Iraq. (It is true that Olmert ...”

“... off to prison, having failed to dispose of an incriminating Porsche. Saunders likes parodying self-help routines and motivational speeches. He’s particularly obsessed with injecting bland menace into the word ‘super’, as in ‘“Super!” said Tom Rodgers’ or ‘Loyalty – it’s super!’ or ‘Robust Economy, Super Moral Climate!’ ‘Tonight ...”

“... are still in Mamarrosa, but the register and cast of the narrative have subtly shifted. Stanton, a self-absorbed expatriate English writer, hopelessly sidetracked by self-doubt and drink, has come to the village to write a novel about William Blake: ‘He read over the last few pages on the screen, making deletions and ...”