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“... smart, soothing, sublimely pretty wallpaper muzak for an Alpine sanatorium, redolent of clean white walls, dandelion salad, mineral water, quiet cerebral games of chess – plenty of luxe and calme, but not much volupté. I don’t get the obsessive fandom Kraftwerk generate, which seems only to increase by the year. The mass freak-out among people I knew ...”

“... luxury were put up in disaster relief tents as opposed to partying with celebrities on the white sands of the Bahamas etc), announced that he was doing the same thing all over again. Early-bird tickets for Fyre II were said to have sold out overnight, most of them presumably snapped up by people hoping to write a viral article about the clowns who ...”

“... the religious Right. Pat Buchanan, an editorial writer who enjoyed high favour in the Reagan White House, achieved some notoriety from his assertion that the ‘homosexuals’ were now reaping the reward for spilling their seed on barren ground. Moral Majority leader Jerry Falwell, who delivered the benediction for the ...”

“... knew its betters. The traditional mafioso treated the galantuomo, the signore, the man in the white suit who sipped his coffee in the piazza at night, with the guarded deference of a peasant before his lord and he never murdered policemen unless it was absolutely necessary. The new Mafia has severed many of its ties to locality and to a given social ...”

“... sort of bizarre posthumous reality? One is in Limbo, perhaps, with the Unbaptised Ancients? (That white wrought iron patio furniture – nice but also slightly funereal – might suggest as much.) But wait – isn’t that a barbecue pit over there? Oh, no: it’s far worse; I’ve ended up in – Hah! Just kidding! Missing Blakey and dogs ...”

“... defenders were Senator Orrin Hatch (Utah) and Congressman George Hansen (Idaho), both Mormons. Jerry Falwell, the Moral Majority leader, joined in the Moonie chorus that Moon’s imprisonment was a violation of religious liberty. Congressmen and Senators were bombarded with offers of free hospitality at the Washington Hilton. Moonies were soon to be found ...”

“... this can be seen in D.A. Pennebaker’s film Dont Look Back, which records in unblinking black and white a two-week slice of Dylan’s British tour in the summer of 1965. Pennebaker was also present with his camera on the even crazier world tour of 1966, but his footage was hijacked by Dylan, who worked with another director, Howard Alk, to produce a seldom ...”

“... those which understand that the elevator is a place where messages meet, rather than people. In white-collar epics from King Vidor’s seminal The Crowd through Robert Wise’s highly inventive Executive Suite and the exuberant Jerry Lewis vehicle The Errand Boy to The Hudsucker Proxy, the Coen brothers’ screwball ...”

“... or otherwise, for literary purposes. The narrator is the son of a Nigerian father, now dead, and a white mother from whom he is estranged: she lives in California while he sticks to the East Coast, so they aren’t likely to meet accidentally. The mother plays very little part in the narrative (‘In this journey of return, the greatest surprise is how ...”

“... lets slip the fact of the boy’s presence to their unreliable, chronically broke and sponging White Russian friend, Prince Yakimov, who betrays him. The Levant Trilogy continues the Pringles’ story but alternates between their experiences and those of a young British officer just arrived in North Africa, Simon Boulderstone, who is trying to track down ...”

“... baby, she had grabbed without thinking a sexy red bra, now clearly visible under her businesslike white blouse. Trapped between the Muffia and the sexists at the office, Kate splurges on shoes, flirts dangerously with a client, and works, works, works – until finally her husband leaves and she has to, as they say, rethink her priorities. The fantasy element ...”

“... of so many elements in The Furrows has one surprising benefit. C’s father is Black, her mother white, and though race isn’t in the foreground of the story it isn’t a subject that can be relegated to the background either. She refers to ‘my tango with race’, and it’s a dance that never ends. The pain of racialised experience emerges jaggedly from ...”

“... sprawl scattered like so much confetti over the gnarly green terrain. In the distance, the tall white cluster of buildings that formed downtown Los Angeles poked through a corona of smog. Coming into view below was my destination: the 480-acre subdivision established in 1887 and named ‘Hollywood’ by a real estate speculator’s wife because, she ...”

“... and safer, especially for America and Israel’. He is given a shrunken skull and ‘exceptionally white teeth’; Franzen goes to some lengths to deny him a name: it is clear we are approaching the heart of darkness. It’s worth quoting his exchange with Joey across a packed dinner table: ‘We have to learn to be comfortable with stretching some ...”

“... well enough, but in Fishponds Asylum. Grant, furious, went to visit his mother. She was 57 with white hair and missing teeth. She didn’t know who he was. He had felt deserted by his mother, but now had to realise that she believed he had deserted her. In London, he had some kind of breakdown. Thirteen years later, in Notorious, Grant does a magnificent ...”