At the Movies

Michael Wood: ‘300’, 26 April 2007

300 
directed by Zack Snyder.
December 2006Show More
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“... you call fanaticism when you’re trying to be creepy rather than dogmatic. In one corner, the self-punishing, war-loving, homophobic (no connection to those ‘boy-loving’ Athenians) Spartans, who on grounds that escape me completely are meant to represent reason, justice, law, freedom and logic, to borrow a few grand words that appear in both book and ...”

At the National Gallery

Peter Campbell: Vermeer and de Hooch, 5 July 2001

“... proportion of the dozen or so pictures safely attributed to Fabritius are on show here: two self-portraits, The Goldfinch from the Mauritshuis, a sleeping sentry and the National Gallery’s own perspective peepshow. The finish of his pictures (also unlike Delft) is painterly, not smooth. In the goldfinch you can count the strokes – one for each wing ...”

Reflections on the Independence Referendum

“... machine in Scotland. No longer. When large numbers stop believing that they can exercise political self-determination within the existing social order they begin to look beyond traditional governing parties. On the Continent (and in England) this has led to the growth of the right. In Scotland what is being demanded is national, social and political ...”

Scenario for a Wonderful Tomorrow

Wolfgang Streeck: Merkel Changes Her Mind Again, 31 March 2016

Europe’s Orphan: The Future of the Euro and the Politics of Debt 
by Martin Sandbu.
Princeton, 336 pp., £19.95, September 2015, 978 0 691 16830 2Show More
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“... of German history. Very much like the US, German elites project what they collectively regard as self-evident, natural and reasonable onto their outside world, and are puzzled that anyone could possibly fail to see things the way they do. Perhaps the dissenters suffer from cognitive deficits and require education by Schäuble in the Eurogroup classroom? One ...”

Vorsprung durch Techno

Ian Penman, 10 September 2020

Kraftwerk: Future Music from Germany 
by Uwe Schütte.
Penguin, 316 pp., £9.99, February, 978 0 14 198675 3Show More
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“... Screen on the Green, which mixed rad new post-punk bands with Herzog films. (Memo to my younger self: really not a good idea to take amphetamines before going to see 16-rpm directors like Herzog and Tarkovsky.) Artists like Fassbinder and Kiefer also aimed for something like Schütte’s beloved Gesamtkunstwerk, but theirs was a far messier business; it ...”

Pepys’s Place

Pat Rogers, 16 June 1983

The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Vol X: Companion and Vol XI: Index 
edited by Robert Latham.
Bell and Hyman, 626 pp., £19.50, February 1983, 0 7135 1993 2Show More
The Diary of John Evelyn 
edited by John Bowle.
Oxford, 476 pp., £19.50, April 1983, 0 19 251011 8Show More
The Brave Courtier: Sir William Temple 
by Richard Faber.
Faber, 187 pp., £15, February 1983, 0 571 11982 4Show More
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“... seal the facts up. When you get beyond their propositional status, all the remarks turn out to be self-communing, self-consoling, self-warning, self-promising, self-cajoling. The illocutionary act takes place in a ...”

The Golden Age of Criticism: Seven Theses and a Commentary

W.J.T. Mitchell, 25 June 1987

“... in any traditional sense. By ‘personal’ I mean that it is autobiographical, self-critical and self-indulgent. 4. The most important movements in contemporary criticism are feminism, Marxism and post-structuralism. By ‘post-structuralism’ I do not mean simply deconstruction, But a diverse and highly ...”

Shall I go on?

Colin Burrow: Loving Milton, 7 March 2013

The Complete Works of John Milton. Vol. VIII: De Doctrina Christiana 
edited by John Hale and J. Donald Cullington.
Oxford, 1263 pp., £225, September 2012, 978 0 19 923451 6Show More
Young Milton: The Emerging Author, 1620-42 
edited by Edward Jones.
Oxford, 343 pp., £60, November 2012, 978 0 19 969870 7Show More
The Complete Works of John Milton. Vol. III: The Shorter Poems 
edited by Barbara Lewalski and Estelle Haan.
Oxford, 632 pp., £125, October 2012, 978 0 19 960901 7Show More
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“... The celebratory shenanigans – the conferences, public lectures, biographies and privy pieces of self-promotion that in our wicked age accompany all major anniversaries – are over. But one key question remains unanswered. How is it possible to like Milton? There is certainly a great deal to dislike. Most people would think of him as an overlearned poet who ...”

Peas in a Matchbox

Jonathan Rée: ‘Being and Nothingness’, 18 April 2019

Being and Nothingness: An Essay in Phenomenology and Ontology 
by Jean-Paul Sartre, translated by Sarah Richmond.
Routledge, 848 pp., £45, June 2019, 978 0 415 52911 2Show More
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“... in Paris in 1924, at the age of 19. He had already been bowled over by Hume’s argument that the self is an illusion, and he was fascinated by Nietzsche, describing him rather enviously as ‘a poet who had the bad luck to be mistaken for a philosopher’. He also took an interest in Karl Jaspers, contributing to a translation of a recent treatise on ...”

Introversion Has Its Limits

Adam Mars-Jones: ‘Essayism’, 8 March 2018

Essayism 
by Brian Dillon.
Fitzcarraldo, 138 pp., £10.99, June 2017, 978 1 910695 41 8Show More
Sound: Stories of Hearing Lost and Found 
by Bella Bathurst.
Wellcome, 224 pp., £8.99, February 2018, 978 1 78125 776 0Show More
Proxies: A Memoir in Twenty-Four Attempts 
by Brian Blanchfield.
Picador, 181 pp., £9.99, August 2017, 978 1 5098 4785 3Show More
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“... at its most respectable. The Antaeus piece is the jazzier and more anecdotal, though the level of self-exposure is modest (Davenport owns up to living by preference on fried baloney, Campbell’s soup and Snickers bars). The title is ‘The Anthropology of Table Manners from Geophagy Onward’, ‘geophagy’ being the eating of clay, something that Davenport ...”

£ … per incident

Melanie McFadyean: Suicides in immigration detention, 16 November 2006

Driven to Desperate Measures 
by Harmit Athwal.
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“... officers were questioning five other men at the flat. Eight of the suicides have been cases of self-immolation. Israfil Shiri, a destitute Iranian asylum seeker, for example, set himself alight in the offices of Refugee Action in Manchester. These vivid cases account for only a fraction of the deaths Athwal lists. Here is a passage taken at random from the ...”

Artovsky Millensky

Andrew O’Hagan: The Misfit, 1 January 2009

Arthur Miller, 1915-62 
by Christopher Bigsby.
Weidenfeld, 739 pp., £30, November 2008, 978 0 297 85441 8Show More
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“... Miller was, in fact, like so many in those years, a sort-of-Marxist committed primarily to self-discovery and the ousting of Fascism, and the plays, where they are at their best, survive as artworks more for the self-discovery than the anti-Fascism. Death of a Salesman, The Crucible, A View from the Bridge and After ...”

Varrrroooom!

Aaron Matz: Céline, 25 March 2010

Normance 
by Louis-Ferdinand Céline, translated by Marlon Jones.
Dalkey Archive, 371 pp., £9.99, June 2009, 978 1 56478 525 1Show More
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“... insignificant bombing of Montmartre. But it’s in Normance that Céline first hits on this self-image: ‘I’m just a chronicler, that’s all! … all I have is a little talent for chronicling … it’s nothing but a mishmash? fine! but since it’s direct experience, what counts most is the chronicler’s integrity!’ And yet it isn’t clear what ...”
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