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“... Baume​ ’s first novel, Spill Simmer Falter Wither (2015), took the form of a love letter from Ray, a 57-year-old recluse, to his vicious rescue dog One Eye. Her new book, A Line Made by Walking, is narrated by Frankie, a 26-year-old artist who has a nervous breakdown, and stows away in her dead grandmother’s bungalow ‘on the brow of a yawning ...”

“... and ‘artificial’ as most dramatic performances, and that the problem ‘for modern man’ is ‘breaking free from conventions and learning how to really feel again’. I’m quoting from Cassavetes on Cassavetes, edited by Ray Carney, who sees this as ‘a daring leap: lived experience could be as much a ...”

“... Federated States of Micronesia. It was a city of islands, a miniature Micronesia consisting of 92 man-made bits of land. Micronesia itself is made up of 607 islands, of which the city of Palikir on Pohnpei is the capital. There is only one way for civilians to get to Pohnpei and most of the other islands in Micronesia. United Airlines Flight 154 takes off ...”

“... camera, the fast editing, and the airy sense that in the right kind of film nothing can get a bad man down. Everything is accident and freedom, until the last accident, which is death. Our man casually kills a policeman because he can; because there is a gun in the car he has stolen; because he wants to be a gangster; and ...”

“... chapter. An English airline offering cheap flights from Riyadh to London discovered that the man who’d translated the ad into Arabic had taken advantage of the opportunity to advertise his brother-in-law’s restaurant on the Edgware Road at the same time. Not so much a marketing disaster as a triumph, I’d say. In its own, rather more modest way, the ...”

“... of the sick, As irritant as the cough’s dry rhetoric. Those hours of waiting for pills, shot, X-ray Or test (while you read novels two a day) Already with a kind of clumsy stealth Distanced you from the habits of your health.   In hope still, courteous still, but tired and thin, You tried to stay the man that you had ...”

“... camp in Sound Beach, Connecticut. One of them was Walt Disney. The other, only 15 years old, was Ray Kroc, the man who later made McDonald’s an empire. When Kroc and his comrades went off to the nearest town on furlough to look for girls, Disney stayed in camp, drawing. Disney served in France and Germany, but the First ...”

“... they scored 52 in all, the fewest runs ever in a home Test (46 from the bat; the splendid Ray Lindwall 6 for 20). The Australian openers were past this shameful mark inside the hour. Don Bradman wasn’t needed until after tea, when he came emotively in at his usual first wicket down. Because he had said that this would be his last Test Match here, he ...”

“... who cannot but bring steadiness and grace and decency to the role, and we have to see him as a man who has almost psychotically learned to concentrate on his trade and not its effects, on his family and no one else, and to permit himself even murder in the name of fidelity and straight dealing. He has inherited a crime empire from his boss and ...”

“... at her own beauty. In Ovid, Narcissus is young, ‘able to be seen as either a boy or a young man’. He is also a fool, vain and deceived. He plunges his arms into the stream but cannot grasp his image. He is a victim of divine vengeance. His death is predicted by Tiresias (like Milton a blind seer), and he eventually turns into a flower. Even his name ...”

“... money to pay for his funeral. Throughout his long and laborious life, Brown remained a family man. He was never free from the anxieties and griefs which went with the responsibilities of having a dependent family. On the other hand, he never had to do without their unfaltering loyalty and support. They were the source of the sturdy confidence that enabled ...”

“... course desperation is funny too, if you tell it right. The Coen Brothers’ new movie, A Serious Man, contains several jokes of this kind, and is such a joke itself. It doesn’t get funny until you start thinking about how ineptly unfunny it is. The ineptness of the genre is captured with disturbing conviction, and makes you wonder how the Coens can have ...”

“... and short spacing pieces (dwangs) define interior and exterior walls and offer a complete X-ray of the structure – like a model made of matchsticks – before the cladding of boards or sheet material dresses it in a not always expected style.Timber frame-houses are light: you can move them about – people quite often do. In a lot to the north of the ...”

“... was, one might add, the most unchanging thing about poor James Boswell, another great vita nuova man, ever inclined to exhort himself: ‘Be Samuel Johnson! Be the rock of Gibraltar!’) All the same, despite Svevo’s rule, there have been a few people – Tolstoy, Wittgenstein and D.H. Lawrence come to mind – who not only went on expecting to be ...”

“... hall, leave our country … I don’t want you here, in the room or in my country. Listen to me, man. I think we should vote for Enoch Powell. Enoch’s our man … We should send them all back.’ Among those troubled by Clapton’s remarks was the photographer David (‘Red’) Saunders. A great bear of a ...”