“... hollow and empty as the space between stars’, or Ellroy’s benzedrine-driven hyper-kinetics, or James M. Cain’s rat-a-tat ‘let’s get stinko’ hard-boiled self-consciousness. Flatness is Willeford’s style; metaphor is mistrusted, so is interiority, both the author’s and the characters’. At the end of The Way We Die Now, the last Moseley book and ...”

“... Theory of the Gimmick concludes, boldly and brilliantly, with a meticulous analysis of Henry James’s late fiction. Ngai has noticed that the investigations of opaque social and moral circumstance conducted in these novels and stories have the effect of exposing an over-reliance, in times of emergency, on waged and unwaged care-providers whose work is ...”

“... portraits, paintings by Van Gogh and Magritte, and a few more difficult works, such as James Ensor’s Mariage des masques.Paintings that documented the West’s preoccupation with the East were a productive theme: Matisse’s mysterious Persian Woman; Gauguin’s Still Life with Japanese Print; a photograph of Edward Lane in Persian ...”

“... to mid-century American pulp fiction. In his introduction to Manchette’s The Mad and the Bad, James Sallis quotes Chandler on the ‘realist in murder’, whowrites of a world in which gangsters can rule nations and almost rule cities, in which hotels and apartment houses and celebrated restaurants are owned by men who made their money out of brothels, in ...”

“... had been covered with African shacks, and its buildings – a school, clinic, museum, community hall, Gandhi’s house and the building in which he had published his newspaper – had been sacked and looted. Today they survive as melancholy shells in an area known as Bhambayi – a Zulu approximation of ‘Bombay’. The events of 1985 cast a heavy pall ...”

“... connections, which ranged from Rodin to Mrs Humphry Ward, put the eminent on their mettle. Henry James thought her school at ‘high, breezy Wimbledon’ held ‘a very particular place ... The one shade of objection is that it is definitely “middle-class”. But all schools here are that.’ Beatrice Webb, who may have had some interest in defining the ...”

“... and the instability of reading. Dover sole is ordered and eaten for lunch (the distance of Pointz Hall from the sea vacillates); Giles thinks of himself as a fish in the stream, and, unnoticing, eats the ‘sole’; the old carp, as old almost as pre-history, occasionally rises to the surface of the pond. Ruotolo remarks that great writers disrupt ‘the ...”

“... Peter von Cornelius. Hugely popular exhibitions of potential schemes were held in Westminster Hall and much discussed, for the public expected a lot for their money. The scheme was supposed to encourage artists, educate visitors, stimulate the members of the Lords and Commons, and tell the national story from its misty Arthurian origins to the field of ...”

“... what he had learned from memory when he returned to his large draughty residence at Madingley Hall. The same year, Albert opened a dossier entitled ‘Bertie’s Marriage Prospects’. Princess Alexandra was the lead candidate from the start: she was pretty and had been ‘very strictly kept’ according to Vicky, who noted approvingly that she had not ...”

“... as professor of creative writing at Glasgow University, a position shared with Tom Leonard and James Kelman; and nice gigs as a celebrity designer of murals at Hillhead subway station and at the Oran Mór arts centre. In terms of politics, however, Gray and the new Glasgow are at loggerheads. In 1990 he lampooned the European City of Culture festivities in ...”

“... died in Sydney when Michael was 14. On the boat home Margaret met a rich middle-aged entrepreneur, James Patrick Anderson, known as Andy, who effectively became Michael’s father, paying for holidays abroad and a private education at Clifton College in Bristol, though according to Spoto they remained ‘strangers’ to each other. Before he went to boarding ...”

“... fortunate, like Pericles’; and 25 years later Pericles was still immediately recognisable in James Shirley’s sledgehammer puns in Arcadia (1640): ‘Tire me? I am no woman. Keep your tires to yourself. Nor am I Pericles Prince of Tyre.’ Indeed, one way to suggest a noisy crowd circa 1609 was to invoke an audience for Pericles: describing a packed ...”

“... woods. Many people in Dewsbury think the media overdid it. ‘The press wanted to make it another James Bulger,’ a police officer tells me. The CPS reduced the charge from attempted murder to assault with intent to cause grievous bodily harm, which is what the girl was found guilty of. Still, it was horrible, and not a surprise, to watch the TV graphics on ...”

“... Calton, an area known for the Barras flea market and the Barrowland Ballroom, once a famous dance hall and now a popular music venue. I had been told that in its first four months, the Thistle oversaw 2010 injections and prevented thirty overdoses. ‘Do you know how many times you’ve used here, Ryan?’ Arthur Jarvis, a social worker, asked. ‘Two hundred ...”

“... for the next twenty years and do all the things he would do. It’s not like Tiger Woods or LeBron James, where since they were twelve you knew they were going to be superstars … It’s not so clear-cut in tennis. It takes time to evolve.’ Federer lost his next match to Tim Henman.‘Every successful player compromises their entire childhood to make ...”