I don't think anyone can accuse him of exploiting his son's death for political purposes, and I don't think that private grief of this sort can ever be judged by public standards. Neither am I entirely convinced that Nick Berg should be held up as a heroic martyr by the anti-war group, no more so, at least, than the various Tombs of Unknown ( Read more... )

heh. i contrived to introduce The Walrus and The Carpenter into an essay on Greek tragedy! it's a very funny bit too ( Read more... )

one down, three to go ( Read more... )

i must have come undone because exams start tomorrow and i'm not stressed! i'm not stressed! i was so not stressed i took an afternoon nap and sat about in christ's pieces thinking hullo clouds, hullo sky, and hullo pretty trees that paint the grass in a wash of pink blossom!priddy flowers are so happifying. there are entire trees and bushes that ( Read more... )

From the admirable Perseus classics website:

BacchantesMen and women who joined in the Dionysian festivals dressed in Asiatic robes and bonnets; and with their heads wreathed with vine and ivy leaves, with fawn-skins (nebrides) flung over their shoulders, and thyrsi, or blunt spears twined with vine-leaves, in their hands, they ran through the ( Read more... )

the clock strikes twelve. i am reading paul auster's city of glass, which like the johnson is fabulously, super, uber-ly, cool -- the central character quinn, a writer of mystery novels, takes a walk around the gridded environs of new york and maps out his walk only to find out that he has inadvertently traced out the word B-A-B-E-L as he wanders ( Read more... )

It's been a long time since I've fallen head over heels for a writer! If only his books were more accessible!

"Typographical eccentricities are also present in the novel [Albert Angelo]: a hole between pages 149 and 152 of the original British edition to enable Albert to foresee his own death, Marlowe-like, in a brawl."

"In Christie Malry's Own ( Read more... )

so -- i was keying "bummed" into a text about how i had bummed away the whole of yesterday and the day before when suddenly and quite unexpectedly the dastardly, bastardly predicted text shoots me right back with ATONE?

i bummed. and the universe is screaming at me to ATONE.

i yelp in disbelief.

i am reading the most fascinating book ever! it's the unfortunates by b.s. johnson and it is a book which comes in a box ( Read more... )

[Stolen off cantabrigiensis]

Dr TD Wilkinson ( Read more... )